What changed hands: on the face of the documents, nothing has yet been transferred. What changed is the wording of the credit, and in a rights story the wording is the only thing an outsider ever gets to read. Two King Promise singles released in autumn 2026 carry a phonogram line that does something no King Promise release had done in four years. It names the party on the other side of the licence.
Apple’s own catalogue, read by this desk on 14 November 2026, gives the line on “Can’t Tame Us (Chelsea Anthem)”, released 29 September 2026, as: “℗ 2026 Nigeria - Sony Music Entertainment West Africa Limited, under exclusive license from 5 Star Entertainment Limited.” The line on “Melody”, released 23 October 2026, is the same except that the licensor is written “5 Star Entertainment”, with no corporate suffix.
Read it slowly, because the order of the names is the deal. Sony’s West Africa subsidiary is the licensee. It is the party receiving rights. 5 Star Entertainment is the licensor, the party granting them. On the face of that document Sony does not own these two masters. It has an exclusive licence to exploit them, from somebody else.
What the credit said before, and what it refused to say#
This matters because of what the same catalogue said for the previous four years. In an earlier record published on 31 August 2026, this desk established that every own-billed King Promise release from “Alright” on 11 December 2020 through “True To Self (Deluxe)” on 13 December 2024 carried a single, unchanging formula: “under exclusive licence to 5K Records Limited / Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited.”
That formula names a licensee and stops. There is no licensor. The sentence has no subject. Somebody was licensing those recordings to a Manchester-registered joint venture and a London Sony company, and the document did not say who. That question sat open for four years.
The 2026 line answers the structural half of it. A licensor now exists on the record, it is not 5K Records Limited, and Sony’s contracting entity has moved from Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited in London to Sony Music Entertainment West Africa Limited in Lagos. 5K Records appears on no King Promise release dated after 13 December 2024.
Two further details are worth stating because they bound the claim. First, Deezer’s API, read the same day, records both singles with the label “SM Entertainment West Africa Limited”, release dates of 29 September and 23 October 2026, and UPCs 196874762592 and 196874843512. A second registry agrees on the Sony entity and both dates. It does not name 5 Star at all, and a “label” field states no direction of grant, so the direction of this licence rests on Apple’s phonogram line alone.
Second, the back catalogue has not moved. Re-read on 14 November 2026, both versions of “True To Self” still carry the 5K Records and Sony UK line, and the 2019 debut “As Promised” still reads “℗ 2019 Legacy Life Entertainment Under Exclusive License to emPawa Africa Limited.” Nothing has been retroactively rewritten. This is a finding about two recordings from 2026, not about a catalogue.
5K Records did not collapse#
The obvious explanation for a label vanishing from a credit line is that the label stopped existing. That is not what happened here.
Companies House, read 14 November 2026, shows 5K RECORDS LIMITED, company number 12658751, as Active, registered at 3rd Floor, Colwyn Chambers, 19 York Street, Manchester. It filed total exemption full accounts to 31 July 2025 on 20 July 2026 and a confirmation statement dated 20 May 2026 on 6 July 2026. Its persons-with-significant-control register still names the same three individuals the earlier record found, Mohamed Alieu Jalloh, Jonathan Kweku Awotwe Mensah, better known as the producer JAE5, and Mohamed Magid Bah, each holding more than 25 and not more than 50 percent of shares. There is still no corporate person of significant control, and still no Sony entity on that register.
So 5K Records is alive, filing on time, and owned by the same people. It has simply stopped appearing on this artist’s records, and the contract that explains why is not public.
Nobody can say who 5 Star Entertainment is#
Here the trail stops. A Companies House company search for “5 Star Entertainment”, read 14 November 2026, returned no active UK company of that name. The closest matches are 5 STAR ENTERTAINMENTS LTD, dissolved in May 2023, a Norwegian-named shell dissolved in 2013, and an international variant dissolved in 2011. None is a West African music company. Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission has no public API and its search service returned HTTP 403 to this desk. Ghana’s Registrar-General’s Department publishes no queryable company search at all. Apple’s line opens with the word “Nigeria” and a dash, which this desk has seen used elsewhere in the same catalogue as a territory marker rather than a statement of contractual territory, so it is recorded and not interpreted.
It is tempting to assume 5 Star Entertainment is the artist’s own company. His 2022 album is called 5 Star. Deezer’s label field on his November 2025 single with Davido, “Bad Habits”, reads “5STAR INC”. The inference almost writes itself, and this desk is not making it. No trade report, no newsroom release and no statement from King Promise or his management says who owns or controls that entity. An artist-named imprint can be wholly artist-owned, partly owned, or a label-funded vanity imprint in which the artist holds no shares whatsoever, and nothing in the public record tells those three structures apart.
There is also a naming problem. Three renderings appear across 2025 and 2026: “5STAR INC”, “5 Star Entertainment Limited”, and “5 Star Entertainment”. “Inc” and “Limited” are not the same corporate form in any jurisdiction. Whether all three are one company is not established.
Where emPawa sits, and where the platforms disagree#
One other name has come back. The releases King Promise made with Mr Eazi through 2026, the single “Mariana” on 19 March and the album See What We’ve Done on 15 April, carry “℗ 2026 emPawa Africa Music Services Limited”. emPawa was the exclusive licensee on his 2019 debut, so a version of that relationship is on his credit line again, six years later, on co-billed work.
And the platforms do not fully agree. For the February 2026 Mr Eazi single “That Way”, Deezer’s label field reads “5STAR INC / emPawa Africa Music Services Limited”, while Apple’s phonogram line for the same release reads “℗ 2026 emPawa Africa Music Services Limited” alone, with no 5 Star naming. One registry puts a 5 Star entity on that record and the other does not. That is a contradiction, not a rounding error, and it is reported rather than smoothed over.
Two release dates for one song#
The Chelsea single carries a conflict between two first-party sources. Apple and Deezer both record “Can’t Tame Us (Chelsea Anthem)” as released on 29 September 2026. Chelsea Football Club’s own newsroom, read 14 November 2026, states that the track “made its debut at a matchday, will feature at fixtures throughout the season, and was officially released on 12 September, as part of our ‘London to the World’ approach to culture.”
Both parties are in a position to know. A club premiere ahead of a commercial streaming release would reconcile the two dates neatly, and no document says that is what happened, so this desk does not assert it. Both dates stand on the record. The club names no label, no rights holder and no fee. Scott Fenton, brand director at Chelsea Football Club, is quoted saying “King Promise came to us with the idea for the track”, which tells you who initiated the collaboration and nothing at all about who owns the recording that came out of it.
What this means for artists#
The useful lesson is about reading, not about suspicion. A credit line that names only a licensee is telling you half a sentence. A credit line that names a licensor and a licensee is telling you the shape of the deal: who holds the asset, and who has been granted the right to sell it for a while. Those are different legal positions, and the second one usually expires.
If your own credit line has no licensor on it, that is worth a question to your lawyer, because one of two things is true. Either the recordings were owned outright by the label from the moment of creation, in which case there was nobody to license from and the wording is simply accurate, or there is a licensor who has not been named publicly. Both are ordinary. They are not the same deal, and only one of them has a reversion date.
The second lesson is about where the paperwork lives. A UK company can be checked in ten minutes for free, which is how this desk can state with confidence that 5K Records is active and who its shareholders are. A Nigerian or Ghanaian company cannot. That asymmetry is not a detail. It means the London side of an African artist’s deal is permanently more legible to the public, to journalists and to future counterparties than the African side, and that an artist-owned African entity sitting in the licensor position, which is structurally the stronger place to sit, is also the position nobody outside the deal can verify. Until West African registries are searchable, the strongest thing an artist can own will also be the hardest thing for anyone to confirm they own.