One of the greatest and most well-known feuds in Nigeria’s comedy scene is that between comedians AY and Basketmouth. Many people find the beef to be really perplexing because it has lasted for so long and both acts are so popular. such as from whence it originated and why?
So, in his latest interview with Chude, AY finally discusses the real reason behind his conflict with Basketmouth. Here are AY’s comments regarding the event that occurred back in 2006.
Speaking finally about what caused the beef between he and Basketmouth, AY said:
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AY: In 2006, this beef, that’s for you to know where it’s coming from: 2006. He [Basketmouth] usually would get gigs like weddings, cuz you know when you’re the rave of the moment, you can get multiple gigs. On a Saturday, maybe two, three weddings. So what he will do at that point in time was to go and attend one, then maybe at some point leave this venue, catch up with the other venue, and then you’ll need somebody to stand in. So that was the opportunity I got from him at the time which I am very very appreciative of till date. Now, something funny happened. At one of the gigs, I got his endorsement to go stand in. Usually, what we get at that time is N30k. And N30,000 at that time was everything to me. N30,000 would buy me my pack of indomie,
recharge card, fuel for my generator, and then opportunity to just pay one or two people to do one or two skits that I can just quickly put out. Okay, so I got this job and the people, they were not too happy seeing me around the venue because they were expecting Basketmouth to come. Long story short, the guy was later happy after the performance. Later there was an exchange of information and I left. This gig also came through one of Basket’s guys. So two weeks running, I haven’t seen N30k. So because I didn’t see N30k and I was starving, so I decided to ask for N30k and he said this person hasn’t remitted, this person hasn’t paid, because you know they’re not happy. So me I’m like “Ah ah, but this person, sheyb you tell me say you were impressed and you were happy? Give my oga money na. Make my oga settle me”. Now me I don’t care if you gave Basket N100k for the job, but my N30k. It was very funny to now hear from them knowing that this full payment has been made long before the event, or why do you think the guy was upset? I said okay, is that the situation? So Basket now sent me a message that what kind of stupid talk is this person saying that they’ve given me money? So I’m now in the middle. This one send me message, so what I did was I forwared this one’s message to this one and I forwarded this one’s message to this other person. So they now started fighting each other and all of that. I didn’t do that because I wanted to get at Basketmouth per se. This was in 2006. I did that because I was hungry. I did that because I was hustling. I did that because I needed food on the table at that time. So the master said that’s it. For this thing that AY did, I’m not going to work with him anymore. I’m not going to do anything with him. Our paths will not cross. I saw him on Ebuka’s interview, he talked about it and he laughed, so me too I like laughing about it that there’s nothing wrong with us. We are good. Everybody is fine, and life goes on [laughs].