With the dispute between Kwesi Arthur and his former label Ground Up Chale drawing intense public attention, Shatta Wale has given advice two possible solutions.
During a TikTok Live interaction on January 22, 2026, the dancehall artiste warned that emotional appeals would carry little weight if the matter proceeds to court. He stressed that legal proceedings are determined by contracts, not public sympathy or personal narratives.
Shatta Wale said the rapper still has viable options and narrowed them down to two realistic paths.
One option, he explained, would be for Kwesi Arthur to seek him out for a private discussion, where he could share lessons from his own years of navigating the music business. The other, he suggested, would involve a broader show of support from the entertainment industry to help resolve the financial issues at the centre of the dispute.
“In the court of law, you cannot take ‘cry’ and ‘people want to kill me’ there. It won’t work, because you already signed. It’s two solutions now: it’s either he looks for me and we sit down so I give him some experienced tactics we can use to make this music business work for him, or we quickly try to find a solution for him.
“The way everybody cares about Kwesi Arthur, we may have to contribute and pay that debt for him,” Shatta Wale said.
The remarks come on the back of claims by Kwesi Arthur accusing Glen Boateng and members of the Ground Up team of intimidation, heavy financial demands and deliberate attempts to obstruct his independent releases.
Those allegations were made in a social media post that triggered widespread debate across the entertainment industry. In the post, the rapper said he had been asked to pay $150,000 to use images of himself for a forthcoming project and hinted that the ongoing dispute had raised concerns about his personal safety.
Ground Up has since responded through its legal counsel, Jonathan Amable, who rejected suggestions that the label had prevented Kwesi Arthur from using his own images.
He clarified that any limitations relate strictly to particular visual content produced by Ground Up during the course of their working relationship.
