P-Square: Peter & Paul Okoye Celebrate 41st Birthday Today

P-Square is the defunct music duo consisting of the twin brothers, Peter Okoye and Paul Okoye. They produced and released their albums through Square Records. In December 2011, they signed a record deal with Akon’s Konvict Muzik label. In May 2012, P-Square signed a record distribution deal with Universal Music Group. On 25 September 2017, numerous media outlets reported that the group disbanded. Reports about a breakup surfaced after Peter reportedly sent a termination letter to the group’s lawyer. Prior to this report, the duo disbanded in 2016, supposedly over a disagreement about the role of their manager.

Controversy
The duo were reported to have handled most of their production/beat making in house. The band has been faced with many controversies for their habit of sampling western songs and popular hits in their records. They have addressed the issue many times in interviews as well as in the lyrics of their songs. Technically speaking, P Square does more in the line of reconstructing the drum patterns, chord progressions or lyrics of the sampled songs as against actually cutting parts of the song and directly sampling into their production. This accounts for the largely electronic feel of their sound.

Some of the songs which have been called up on this account include “Get Squared”, “Game Over”, “Danger” and others.

P-Square attracted headlines because they reportedly turned irate when they were notified by organisers in the middle of their performance at the Guinness Show about some change in plans which would affect the length of their performance, and that of the next act, 2 Face Idibia. As reported by a news site vanguardngr.com, the info apparently stirred up resentment as Peter immediately said “I don’t know why, anytime a foreign artiste comes to Nigeria, they (show organizers) wanna treat us like slaves in our country”. Although initially they continued their performance but midway through, they threw their microphones to the ground and angrily stormed out of the stage saying, “We are leaving; they don’t want 2face to come on stage.” They were said to have immediately left the premises of the show, but after intervention of the show organisers, they came on stage later with 2face for a performance, but later on received an apology.

The duo had a difference in opinion regarding what Peter perceived as a lopsidedness in individual input of songs which was getting featured on their joint albums with Paul getting a lion share of his songs selected. This led to Peter refusing to do anything associated with the name “P-Square” for weeks. He later relocated with his wife and kids from the mansion they shared. A lawyer was involved to help split their fortune as they were both involved in joint ventures over the prior years.