King Promise’s ‘5 Star’ album won the album of the year at the 24th Vodafone Ghana Music Awards.
Fans and some industry players have expressed their shock after his win.
Critics think it should be a win for Black Sherif.
Commenting on this during a Twitter space, a member of the Board of the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, Nii Ayite Hammond, told Joy Entertainment’s Kwame Dadzie that Sherif’s ‘The Villain I Never Was’ album and ‘5 Star’ from Promise were all good albums.
He further defended while ‘5 Star’ carried the day.
“It is true that ‘The Villain I Never Was’ ticks all the boxes, the same way King Promise’s album also ticks all the boxes. You realise that when you read the category definition, it doesn’t say hit song and quality of recording. It says ‘and/or’. So when you are assessing them, you assess both and you make a choice out of that assessment,” Nii said.
On why the category definition for the Album of the Year changed from an album just having the highest number of hit songs to one possessing technical qualities, he explained:
“At a point in time in the music life of the country, we were doing more singles so the albums were kind of suffering. And so people who were coming out with albums and we realized that the definition that we had in the past which was three or more hit songs was becoming a challenge. So in the wisdom of the Board we needed to change that definition.”
Nii Ayite Hammond added: “We also noticed that there were quality productions which we were overlooking just because we were looking at the popularity aspect so we needed to bring that one in such that people who also take their time to produce quality albums get featured.”
The VGMA Album of the Year “is adjudged by the Academy and Board as the most outstanding compilation (either by the number of hit songs and or the quality of production) of an Album that was released during the year under review. It must have generated excitement during the year.”
