Ziiki Media has held the phonographic copyright line on every new Nadia Nakai release since March 2025, and it still does after she publicly accused the company of failing her. The South African rapper signed with the Sandton-based company on 23 November 2023. Twenty-one months later, in August 2025, she used her own Instagram Stories to call her contract “wild” and say the company “can’t even do the bare minimum.” Three months after that, in November 2025, her single with Nasty C still carried Ziiki’s copyright credit. Nothing in the public record shows the relationship ended.
The full deal record, with every source, is here.
What actually changed hands#
No source states a fee, an advance, a royalty rate or a term. What is documented is a signing event and a change in whose name appears on the copyright line. Nakai and an executive identified as Ria, described as Executive Director at Ziiki Media, both gave on-the-record quotes at a signing held at La Parada in Parkmore, Sandton, on 23 November 2023. That is a label or distribution signing, reported as such, not a catalogue sale.
The clearest evidence of what the deal actually does is not the announcement. It is the copyright line on Apple Music, checked directly in the page markup of each release rather than pulled from a database summary. Her 14 March 2025 album Braggacy, a 13-track tribute to her late partner, the rapper AKA, carries the credit “(P) 2025 Ziiki Media.” Her 28 November 2025 single “REALLY,” featuring Nasty C, carries the identical credit. Ziiki Media, not Nakai and not any prior label, is the named phonographic rightsholder on record for her current material.
Four labels in nine years, and the credits do not always match the announcements#
Nakai’s release history, checked track by track, is a useful case study in how often a reported signing and a copyright credit diverge.
From 2016 to early 2020, every release, including the Bragga EP and her debut album Nadia Naked, carries the same formula: “Family Tree, under exclusive license to Universal Music (Pty) Ltd (ZA).” That is a straightforward licensing structure, her independent label at the time licensing distribution through a Universal affiliate.
In May 2020, according to a biographical summary of her career, she signed to Def Jam Africa, the imprint Universal Music Group launched that same month in South Africa with a roster that also included Cassper Nyovest and Nasty C. This is where the trail gets interesting: nowhere in her Apple Music catalogue, checked release by release, does a Def Jam Africa or Universal Music Africa credit appear. The signing was reported. It never shows up as a copyright line. That gap does not prove the signing was false; label rosters and phonographic credits are not always the same thing, and an artist can be signed to a company without every release crediting that company by name. But it means this record cannot verify, from the documents available, that the Def Jam Africa signing produced any credited release at all.
In June 2021, per the same biographical summary, she left Family Tree Records to start her own label. Then, on 22 July 2022, a single called “Not The Same,” featuring Lucasraps, appeared with the credit “Nadia Nakai under exclusive license to Warner Music Africa.” No announcement of a Warner Music Africa deal turned up in any source checked for this record. It reads as an undisclosed, single-release licence rather than a label signing, and it sits between the Family Tree departure and the Ziiki signing with no public explanation connecting it to either.
Releases from September 2023 through October 2024, including “Back In,” “Runnin’ Back” and “Umfazi,” are self-credited to Nadia Nakai alone. That run of independent releases sits directly before the Ziiki Media signing and directly before the first Ziiki-credited release, which did not land until March 2025, roughly sixteen months after the announced signing date.
An ownership question the company’s own coverage does not resolve#
Afrobeats Wire’s own directory profile of Ziiki Media names Arun Nagar as its founder and head. The reporting around Nakai’s signing, and the reporting around her later dispute with the company, both name an executive called Ria, elsewhere identified as Ria Nagar, as the person running the relationship with Nakai. Coverage of the company itself is inconsistent in another way too: some of it calls Ziiki Media a “Pan-African label,” other coverage calls it a “music and entertainment distribution company.” Those are not interchangeable descriptions. A label typically signs an artist to a recording contract and may invest in the release. A distributor typically moves someone else’s finished recordings to stores and platforms for a fee or a cut. This record does not resolve which one governs the Nakai relationship, because no primary document checked settles it either way. It is reported here as an open question, not smoothed into a single tidy label.
The dispute, and what survived it#
In August 2025, Nakai’s Instagram Stories alleged that Ziiki Media had failed to deliver on promises. She said she had moved Braggacy‘s release date by a month “for them to do absolutely nothing,” and described her original contract with the company as “wild.” A response from Ziiki Media followed within days, though the fullest account of that response sits behind a paywalled outlet this record could not independently verify through its own source-checking process, so it is treated here only as a secondary reference, not as a primary source for any claim in this piece.
What is independently checkable is the copyright line after the dispute. “REALLY,” the Nasty C collaboration released three months after Nakai’s public complaint, still carries “(P) 2025 Ziiki Media.” Whatever was said privately, the phonographic rights relationship, at least as reflected on the DSP, did not visibly change.
What this means for artists#
Three things are worth taking from Nakai’s paper trail if you are negotiating your own deal.
First, a signing announcement is not proof of what ends up on your copyright line, and the reverse is also true. Nakai’s Def Jam Africa signing was reported clearly and never appears in a single credit; her Warner Music Africa licence appears clearly on one release and was never announced at all. Track your own catalogue’s actual phonographic credits the way this record did, release by release, rather than assuming a press announcement and a rights reality are the same document.
Second, “label,” “distributor” and “publisher” get used loosely in African music press, including in coverage of your own deals. If your own signing announcement cannot tell a reader whether the company owns your masters, administers them or just distributes them, that ambiguity is worth resolving in your contract even if it never gets resolved in the press.
Third, a public dispute with your label or distributor does not automatically end the underlying rights arrangement, and it will not show up as a break in your DSP credits unless the contract actually terminates and a new one is filed. If you are unhappy with a partner, check what your release pages actually say before and after you speak publicly. That credit line is one of the few pieces of the relationship that is checkable by anyone, including your own fans, without access to the contract itself.
