Famed Ghanaian rapper and producer E.L has offered a startlingly honest look back at his crowning moment in 2016. The B.A.R crooner revealed that winning the coveted Artist of the Year Award at the Telecel Ghana Music Awards (formerly VGMA), felt sunken and “anticlimactic.”
In an interview with YouTube personality Kula, the celebrated rapper admitted that the career-defining win did not deliver the emotional high he had long imagined. “Winning 2016 AOTY at VGMA felt anticlimactic for me, and that is a genuine expression,” he shared. “I didn’t feel the kind of magic I thought I would that night at the end of the road.”
E.L, known for hits like “Mi Na Bo Po” and “Koko,” explained that he had built up a grand vision of what success would feel like. “I thought I would feel successful after winning it but I didn’t feel that,” he confessed. He described the moment as a simple formality, “It was just the plague I picked up and went home. The next day felt normal, like nothing had changed.”
The admission reveals a deeper emotional struggle, as the artist felt a disconnect between public validation and private fulfillment. He confessed to having “deceived myself to think I would be on top of the mountain after winning the award.”
The aftermath of the win was not the triumphant celebration he had envisioned, but a period of introspection and emotional turmoil. “I thought winning it was going to be more fireworks, parading on the streets and you know orgasmic but it wasn’t,” he recounted.
Instead, he found himself in a difficult place. “After winning, I presented the awards, put some motion into place and I just fell into a deep hole after that.”
This profound emotional experience, E.L noted, became the very fuel for some of his most impactful work. He directly linked the feeling to the creation of songs like “Body Bags” and, most notably, “Kaa Bu Ame,” which was a direct response to the widespread rumour that he had “paid for the awards.”
