Every Skepta release since the “48 Hours” EP of 24 November 2023 carries a phonogram credit naming Big Smoke Records Ltd as owner of the recording, under exclusive licence to Epic Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited. Big Smoke Records Ltd, UK company 13281411, was incorporated on 21 March 2021, with Joseph Adenuga, who performs as Skepta, as its sole director and sole person with significant control throughout. Companies House shows the company filing “accounts for a dormant company” for every year it has reported since, most recently to 31 March 2025.
Those two facts sit next to each other on the public record. One says the company owns a catalogue that has been commercially released through one of the world’s largest music groups for three years. The other says that, in its own bookkeeping, nothing significant happened. Neither fact is in dispute. What connects them is not established by anything this desk could read.
A credit that starts in November 2023, not at incorporation#
Big Smoke Records Ltd was incorporated twenty months before its name reached a single release. The first credited record is the “48 Hours” EP, released 24 November 2023; Skepta posted on his own account the following day, “Big Smoke Records 1st release #48Hours”. From there the credit runs through Jangrova, Gas Me Up, Tony Montana, Miss Independent, Why Lie?, Alpha Omega, Friendly Fire, Sirens (From Ireland), Innocent Smile and The Fork and Knife, all read from the UK Apple catalogue on 10 October 2026. Each carries the same sentence: Big Smoke Records, under exclusive licence to Epic Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited.
Two releases break the pattern in an interesting way. “Back 2 Back” and the “Skepta .. Fred” EP, both made with Fred again.. in August 2025, invert the sentence, putting Epic in the owner position and crediting “Big Smoke Ltd” rather than the registered “Big Smoke Records Ltd”. A company search of the UK register turns up no such company. Two more 2025 singles, Round 2 and JUNIOR’S LAW, drop Epic and Sony from the credit altogether and read just “Big Smoke”. None of these variants is explained anywhere, and this record does not guess at what changed; it reports that the wording moves around.
What “dormant” actually says, and what it does not#
Dormant is a specific legal word. Under the Companies Act 2006, a company files dormant-company accounts when it has had no significant accounting transaction in the period, a test that excludes almost nothing except the Companies House filing fee itself and the shares issued at incorporation. Big Smoke Records Ltd has filed that way for the periods to 31 March 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, which is every period that overlaps with a catalogue now generating streams on every major platform.
That is not necessarily a contradiction. A company can hold the contractual right to a royalty and simply not have invoiced or received anything bookable inside the UK filing year being reported, or the money due to the licensor can be paid somewhere else in the group entirely. What dormancy establishes with more confidence is narrower: there is no intangible asset recognised on this company’s balance sheet, because there is no balance sheet beyond the one-pound capital statement, and no charge has ever been registered against it. If anyone lent money against these recordings, it left no trace here.
The company has never changed that one pound of capital either. No share allotment, no capital increase, nothing: the figure recorded on 21 March 2021 is still the figure on the register in 2026.
Compare the label it replaced#
Skepta’s catalogue before the switch, from Konnichiwa in 2016 through All In in 2021 and still on Family Tree in July 2025, carries the Boy Better Know credit. Boy Better Know Ltd, company 06775928, is controlled not by Joseph Adenuga but by his brother Jamie Adenuga, who performs as JME, and it files micro-entity accounts, the category reserved for a small company that has actually traded, for every year since 2020. Put the two side by side: the label that predates the Epic deal reports trading income; the label that holds the Epic deal reports none, for the same years.
A third company belonging to Joseph Adenuga, Big Smoke Publishing Ltd, incorporated at the same London address in December 2022, is also dormant throughout its history, and was hit with a first Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off in November 2024 before that action was reversed two months later. No release credits Big Smoke Publishing with anything. A fourth company, Big Smoke Corporation Limited, is the one that was publicly launched with press coverage in November 2022 as a cultural brand and platform; it carries wholesale-trade and professional-services codes rather than a music code, sits at a different London address, and nothing on the register links it to either of the other two beyond the shared name.
Owns, licenses, distributes: what the credit actually claims#
A phonogram credit is a claim, not a court finding. “Big Smoke Records, under exclusive licence to Epic Records” asserts that Big Smoke Records holds the copyright in the sound recording and has granted Epic the exclusive right to exploit it, for whatever term and territory a private contract sets out. It does not mean Epic bought the masters, and it does not mean Big Smoke Records administers Skepta’s songwriting, which is a separate right this record found no trace of anywhere. An exclusive licence of this kind usually comes back to the licensor when its term runs out; a sale does not.
Nothing read for this record discloses what Epic or Sony pays for that licence, what the term is, or what territory it covers beyond “worldwide” as a practical matter of how streaming metadata is delivered. “Not disclosed” is the accurate description, not an estimate.
Where Nigeria enters this specifically#
The one release in this catalogue that matters most to this desk is “Tony Montana”, released 1 March 2024, Skepta featuring Nigerian artist Portable. It carries the identical Big Smoke/Epic credit as the rest of the catalogue, read in both the UK and Nigerian Apple storefronts. Portable’s own catalogue, 201 releases checked, is otherwise credited almost entirely to his own imprint, Zeh Nation; Tony Montana is the exception. No agreement naming Portable or Zeh Nation was found in any UK filing, and Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission, which would be the register to check that from the other side, has no search interface this desk could reach. The feature appears to run entirely on Big Smoke and Epic’s paperwork, with nothing on the public record placing Portable or his company inside it.
What this means for artists#
An imprint carrying your name is not the same thing as a trading company. Skepta’s catalogue sits inside a label he fully controls, which is a stronger position than many artists have. But “I own the company” and “the company is actively accounting for income from my catalogue” are two different claims, and only one of them is visible on a public filing. If your own imprint holds your masters, its accounts, not its name, are what shows whether money is moving through it.
A feature can run on someone else’s paperwork entirely. Portable’s one Big Smoke-credited release did not require a UK filing in his own name or his label’s. If you are featured on a major-adjacent release, ask directly where the credit line places you, because the public record may show nothing about your side of it at all, which is not the same as nothing having been agreed.
Read what the credit says, not what the deal was called. Licence, distribution and ownership are different legal positions with different consequences for how long they last and who can sue to enforce them. The wording on your own releases, and whether it stays consistent from one release to the next, is something you can check yourself without legal help, and this catalogue shows that wording can move without explanation.
Limits of this record#
What Epic Records or Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited pays Big Smoke Records Ltd is not established, nor is why the company’s own accounts show no significant transaction across periods that overlap a commercially active catalogue, nor what explains the “Big Smoke Ltd” name variant or the inverted credit on the two Fred again.. releases. Whether Portable or Zeh Nation is a party to any written agreement with Big Smoke Records or Epic is not established; Nigeria’s company register was not reachable by automated search for this record. No publisher or administrator for Skepta’s songwriting share was located. Sony’s and Epic’s own newsroom pages were not queried for this record, because this site’s existing company file on Epic Records already notes that sonymusic.com returns an access error to this server; no statement from either company about this specific arrangement has been read.
Everything above comes from documents read on 10 October 2026: five Companies House pages for Big Smoke Records Ltd, three for Boy Better Know Ltd, filing history for Big Smoke Publishing Ltd, the overview for Big Smoke Corporation Limited, the Apple Music catalogue for Skepta in the UK storefront and for Portable in the Nigerian storefront, and Skepta’s own public statement dating the label’s first release.
