Ten years ago today, Runtown released “Mad Over You,” a song he made in 2016 while he was already fighting the label that signed him. Ten years on, it is playing more in Nigeria than it ever has on Spotify. And on Spotify, the credit line under it still reads “℗ 2016 Ericmany,” the company a court in Abuja ruled in July he never lawfully left.
The numbers have kept climbing long after the song stopped being new. Spotify’s own counter puts it past 149.7 million plays, up from about 2 million in March 2017, and it still adds roughly 185,000 a day worldwide. Every one of its best weeks on Spotify Nigeria’s chart has come in 2026, led by about 332,000 streams in the week of October 8, and it reached its highest weekly position there, No. 84, this July. When Runtown headlined Spotify’s first Surround Sound show at Livespot in Lagos on September 26, his first show with a band in ten years, he played it in the set and came back to it to close the night.
That encore is the part fans can hear. The part they can’t sits in a judgment from July 16.
Justice O.A. Musa of the FCT High Court held that the recording agreement Runtown signed with Eric Many on June 22, 2016, days after the two sides settled a case in New York and about four months before “Mad Over You” came out, was never lawfully ended. The court ordered him to pay ₦266.7 million the label says it is yet to recoup, plus ₦50 million in damages and ₦3 million in costs, with 10% yearly interest on top.
It also ruled that the “Runtown” name belongs to the label, barred him from recording or performing outside Eric Many’s management and ordered him to deliver the masters for one album.
Two weeks later, Runtown answered on X, and he did not sound new to this.
“Every year” is close to the record. The two sides settled out of court in June 2016, the fight carried on, and for years the version fans carried was that it dissolved in June 2018 and left Runtown full ownership of his music. He has released through his own Soundgod Music Group ever since, including the compilation “SSG (Sounds Of Soundgod)” on July 11, five days before the judgment landed.
None of that is audible in the record itself. Del B built the beat with Runtown, T-Spize added guitar and Runtown worked out the flute, and the whole song is a love note to a Ghana girl he hopes can cook waakye. Mr Eazi covered it within weeks, and Jamaica’s Ding Dong had his own version by the next October. He has called it “a blessing and a curse at the same time,” speaking on Apple Music radio in 2021. “It’s that song that changed everything,” he said.
Ten years in, he still closes shows with it. Every play still lists the label he says will never get his catalogue.