Blaqbonez’s Masters Have Carried Chocolate City for Eight Years Without a Break. Who Owns 60 Per Cent of the Label Is Still Unknown.

Blaqbonez, born Emeka Akumefule in Imo State, built a reputation on Nigeria’s independent hip-hop circuit before his commercial releases carry a single continuous credit line: Chocolate City. That credit first appears on his own catalogue on 27 July 2018 and has not moved since, through more than thirty of his own singles, EPs and albums, up to and including the single he released on 28 August 2026. Chocolate City Group’s own site names him as a current artist today.

What this record does not do is resolve who owns Chocolate City itself. Warner Music Group advanced Chocolate City’s parent company a convertible loan in March 2019 that a London court has since ruled ripens into 60 per cent of the company at Warner’s election, and no public source establishes whether that conversion has been exercised. This record sits alongside that open question, not on top of it: whatever the answer, Blaqbonez’s masters have sat with the Chocolate City side of that structure, continuously, for eight years.

What his own catalogue shows, release by release

All lines read on 11 September 2026 from Apple’s catalogue lookup for artist ID 1033968464 (Nigeria storefront) and Deezer’s artist and album endpoints for artist ID 8774338.

The one day two different labels appear

On 27 July 2018, Blaqbonez released two singles on the same day under two different phonogram credits: “Play” under Chocolate City, and “Last Time Under” under a company called UKMD. Neither source obtained explains the second credit, and no later release carries it again. His first solo release of that year, “Bad Boyz” on 1 March 2018, is self-credited on Apple (“℗ 2018 Blaqbonez”) but filed under a label called “Shot Out” on Deezer, an inconsistency between the two services that this record notes and does not resolve. Read together, the cleanest reading of the metadata is that Blaqbonez moved from self-releasing into the Chocolate City family within the same month, July 2018, two years after he first approached the label directly and roughly a month before his breakout project, “Bad Boy Blaq,” came out under the label’s 100 Crowns imprint as part of its 2018 hip-hop series.

100 Crowns, then Chocolate City Music

The imprint name on the credit line changes once more, and only once. His February 2019 EP carries “100 crowns,” matching trade reporting that describes him as signed to 100 Crowns, a hip-hop-focused imprint of Chocolate City whose other members include A-Q and Loose Kaynon. From his next release, in August 2019, onward, every one of his own albums, EPs and singles reads “Chocolate City Music” on both Apple and Deezer, including the two entries where Apple’s copyright field appears to have duplicated the label name in the source data (“Chocolate City Music Chocolate City Music”), an artifact this record flags rather than corrects.

The credit line has not broken since, including through 2026

From “Mr. Boombastic” in October 2019 through “BIG PERFORMER,” his most recent single as of this writing, every own-artist release in Blaqbonez’s Apple Music and Deezer catalogues carries the Chocolate City Music credit without exception, an unbroken run of more than seven years and over two dozen releases. Chocolate City Group’s own site, current as of 11 September 2026, lists him alongside Young Jonn, Candy Bleakz, TAR1Q, Noon Dave and Major AJ as an artist on Chocolate City Music, describing the label as “one of Africa’s most influential record labels.” A trade profile of the label’s roster, published by Notjustok on 5 May 2021, separately describes him as “signed to 100 Crowns, an imprint [of] Chocolate City Music,” consistent with what his catalogue shows for that period.

One track credited to an “EF Moon & Blaqbonez” collaboration, released 10 September 2026 under a different company, Inner Circle Entertainment, was checked and excluded from this record: Apple’s own artist credit names EF Moon, not Blaqbonez, as the release’s primary artist, and Blaqbonez appears on it only as a featured guest. It is not evidence of any change to his own label relationship, and is noted here only to rule it out.

What this means for artists

A phonogram credit that has not moved in eight years is a genuinely strong signal that an artist’s masters have not been sold, reverted or relicensed elsewhere in that window, and is one of the few things a reporter can check without a contract in hand. It is not, on its own, proof of what the underlying agreement says. Blaqbonez has spoken publicly about valuing creative control in his deal with 100 Crowns, but no source located by this desk states his royalty rate, advance, term length, ownership split or reversion rights, and this record does not claim to know them. For artists weighing a label deal, the lesson is the same one this record demonstrates: the credit line an audience sees on Spotify or Apple Music is not the contract, and consistency in that line over time speaks to operational stability at the label, not to the specific terms an individual artist signed.

What is not established

No contract between Blaqbonez and Chocolate City Music, 100 Crowns or Chocolate City Group was obtained, and no amount, royalty rate, term length or reversion clause appears in any source located. Neither party has stated whether the underlying agreement is a recording contract, a licence or something else; “Licensing” is used here only because it is the closest available category in this site’s own vocabulary for what a phonogram credit evidences, not because either party has described the arrangement that way. Whether Warner Music Group has exercised its option to take 60 per cent of Chocolate City’s parent company remains unresolved and is outside the scope of this record; readers are directed to this desk’s separate, standing record on that question. No South African or Nigerian company registry was consulted, and no publishing or songwriting administrator for Blaqbonez’s catalogue is named in any source obtained.