King Promise’s 5 Star Album also ticked the boxes to win Album of the Year – Nii Ayite Hammond defends VGMA board

 A Board member of the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards (VGMA), Mr Nii Ayite Hammond, has defended the scheme’s decision to award the Album of the Year award to King Promise’s  ‘5 Star’ album over Black Sherif’s ‘Villian I Never Was’ at the recently held event.

Social media and the general public were shocked when Black Sherif was snubbed for the Album of the Year; sparking a huge debate.

In an interview with Journalist, Kwame Dadzie, Mr Hammond acknowledged that Black Sherif had a good album, ‘The Villain I Never Was’, but King Promise’s ‘5 Star’ album was equally deserving of the award.

“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,” he pointed out

According to the astute board member, the team had to revise their definitions and keywords in order to keep up with the trends.

The scheme defines the Album of the Year award as the award that “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.”

“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,” he said

He further noted that there were quality productions that were being overlooked, which was why they needed to bring in the technical aspect of album production to feature those who took their time to produce quality albums.

“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,” he told listeners on Twitter spaces hosted by Joy Entertainment.

Black Sherif on Monday expressed shock after his name wasn’t mentioned as the winner of the Album of the Year. Speaking on TV3 New Day, the newly-crowned Artiste of the Year stated: “Obviously, I was waiting to hear my name, but when my name wasn’t mentioned, I said, ‘Yawa’.”