Ethic Entertainment Suffer Loss of Hit Song ‘Figa’ Due To Copyright Issues

Popular Kenyan boy band Ethic recently suffered from a touch of bad publicity when their hit song of 2019 Figa was taken down from YouTube permanently over copyright issues. The song which had garnered 2 million views in less than a month became the topping song on East African music charts and soon after it’s release, Jamaican dance hall star Konshens collaborated with Ethic to release the remix of Figa.

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Ethic Entertainment which is comprised of the famous four namely, Swat, Seska, Zilla and Reckless made their first introduction into the Kenyan music industry with a rather controversial release, Lamba Lolo. The song which was a huge success paved their way to releasing more hit songs including Figa which featured Kenyan radio presenter turn socialite Kamene Goro. It has been reported that the song was removed from YouTube since the video violated copyright policy by stealing the beat from another song called Cono from Spinnin’ Records. The video was also removed from Apple music for the same reason.

YouTube maintains a right to take down a video for being in violation of even the smallest of copyright policies. I can tell you this, Ethic are definitely not the first and will not be the last group of artists to suffer from stealing someone else’s work. The group’s manager John Mbugua upon questioning, claimed that the song’s removal was intentional. When asked by the media, he said that Ethic was planning on something big that included the deletion of the song.

Kenyans are definitely not buying this excuse from the group’s manager but from mass reactions, it is clear that people are not even angry over finding out that Kenya’s famous four can lack originality. In fact, the general opinion is for the song to be uploaded back on YouTube for being phenomenal despite having another song’s beat. To many people, Figa did the beat justice more and fans can only anticipate what the hit makers have planned for us next.