Ruff & Smooth Raise Red Flag Over Ghana Music Awards

Another edition of the most prestigious musical event in Ghana has been officially launched and as usual it is already receiving some criticisms from some musicians who feel sidelined for not getting a single nomination.

The Ghana Music Awards Festival was launched at the Golden Tulip Hotel on Friday February 25, 2011.

The “Swagger” boys Ricci Nana Agyeman aka Bullet (Ruff) and Clement Baah Foh aka Akan (Smooth) known together as "Ruff & Smooth" are one of the first to raise red flags over the nominations. The Duo is alarmed as to why even a single track from their very strong album could not attract nomination for this year’s awards.

Speaking on Peace FM’s “Entertainment Review” program, Akan (Smooth) registered their displeasure at the turn of events. According to him their fans on facebook and others mediums on the internet got very upset and began asking why they were not nominated for this year’s GMA, even though he had not seen the nomination list himself. True to their fans’ cry, he said, their name was not on the list when he checked.

“I feel that Ruff and Smooth as artiste have made a lot of impact since we released this album and looking at what we have been able to achieve personally, I think we deserve to be nominated in several categories. Awards are supposed to boost, motivate and make you feel that your work has been recognized. But we feel our efforts have been downplayed by the organizers and I don’t know why that happened,” he explained.

He further stated that their songs received appreciable raves on the outside world because they won awards in Nigeria and other African countries and also performed in South Africa on Big Brother Africa (All Stars) Season 5, so they cannot understand why they have been sidelined.

Asked whether their album falls within the calendar year (December 2009-November 2010), Akan said their popular hit song “Swagger” was nominated in last year’s awards as a single because their album had not been released by then.

“The full album was released at the beginning of 2010 which means that we qualify. Even if they decide to take “Swagger” out because it was nominated last year, there are other hit songs like “Sex Machine”, “Azingele”, “Monalisa” and reggae song “Time Changes” on the album. Unless the Ghana Music Awards organizers are saying none of these songs is popular...I think they have not been fair to us at all,” he concluded.

Reacting to this, Juno Abena Turkson, Public Relations Officer for Charter House said “Indeed Ruff and Smooth’s album came up for consideration this year but what happened is that most of the songs we found on the album were songs released for last year’s awards scheme.

So we couldn’t nominate it as individual songs for this year because they were nominated last year. It was the album which qualified but it is the same songs which were listed for last year out of which “Swagger” was nominated last year. That is why Ruff and Smooth couldn’t make it this year,” Juno explained.

However, Ruff and Smooth say Juno’s explanation does not hold because a single by R2Bees “I Dey Mad” was nominated in previous awards and a song titled “Kiss Your Hand” from the same album has been nominated this year.

They further added that Samini’s “Trigga” was nominated last year and the same song and even other songs like “Sweet Mistake” have been nominated this year, from the same album.

According to the duo, they had a call from a Charter House representative to submit their album for consideration for this year’s award, "so if they knew they were not going to nominate us, why then did they call us to submit our work?