Ghanaian rapper Edem has moved to clear the air over lingering controversy surrounding his comments about the 2015 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA) Artiste of the Year category, insisting that his longstanding grievance was directed at the awards scheme rather than at the winner, Stonebwoy.
Speaking on Angel FM in Kumasi, Edem addressed the fallout from social media posts last year in which he described the 2015 outcome as “daylight robbery,” drawing a comparison to the 2024 Ballon d’Or controversy in which Vinicius Jr was widely expected to win but did not. Those remarks triggered a public back-and-forth with MC Portfolio and others who interpreted them as an attack on Stonebwoy’s legitimacy as that year’s winner.
In the Angel FM interview, Edem pushed back on that reading. “The statement that I should have won was written by my page manager,” he said. “But the reason why I was reserved was that the statement was not against Stonebwoy, but it was against the award scheme. Even though my brother Stonebwoy won, so far as I was in that category, I deserved to win.”
He also explained why he did not mobilise votes for himself during the campaign period. “The only thing I didn’t do that year was not to vote. I believe that if I truly deserve something, I should not be the one to buy airtime for people to vote for me. It should be genuinely gotten,” he said.
Edem, Stonebwoy, and Sarkodie were the three biggest winners at the 16th edition of the VGMA in 2015, each taking home three awards. The nominees in the Artiste of the Year category that year were Daddy Lumba, Stonebwoy, Guru, Edem, MzVee, Sarkodie, and Samini.
Beyond the awards controversy, Edem used the Angel FM platform to share a broader philosophy on the music business. He argued that the industry is heavily shaped by public perception and financial optics that rarely reflect the lived reality of artists. “The music business is a very perception-driven game, which is usually informed by what the artist wants them to think,” he said, adding that some artists project an image of prosperity while privately struggling. “At the end of the day, it is not about fans. It is about having better and promising lives to give our children and family better opportunities than we had,” he said.
