After investing her time and energy in a protégé, she expected her to bow, worship, profess undying admiration, and keep going back for advice. However, as the protégé’s career soured, her master’s career began to ring hollow, and that was the beginning of the master versus student battle. 

While many thought that maybe after half a decade of singer Cindy Sanyu provoking Sheebah Karungi to consider a music battle, she would finally end the bickering, she has maintained stoking the flames. 

Cindy has now claimed that the music battle they had was not a stunt, despite all the hints—from booking the same venue on the same day, trolling each other in the media up to a joint presser, and three more shows after (Mbale, Dubai, UK)—that partly reeked of one. According to her, the battle was personal, because she invested 24 months of her life polishing Sheebah only to disrespect her.

“Was the battle a stunt? No! I don’t like that chic. Every feeling was attached to the battle. I nurtured that woman when she had just come out of the group and didn’t know what to do. I spent two years teaching her the business, wrote her first song, and took her with me on tour for her to understand how the industry works. When she turned against me after becoming successful, it was personal to me. That’s why the battle was real. I wanted to show her never to mess with me, I was her teacher,” Cindy told the press recently. 

Meanwhile, socialite Bad Black has finally said what many have had in mind for a while and asked Cindy to stop making Sheebah the subject of engagements she has with the public. 

“Can you kindly move on? You are still stuck with Sheebah. Now you’ve become empisi [hyena], which follows the lion. Talking about Sheebah everywhere you go is no longer funny; it shows you are irrelevant,” she wrote online. 

In 2020, when Cindy was still in the fields sowing the seeds for the music battle that she harvested in 2023, Sheebah said in an interview that she was lucky Cindy wrote her first song [Kunyenyeza] for free. Cindy carried it to social media to water the seeds of the battle. “It’s always nice when people remember what you did for them. Gratitude is a must in life. Denis Katooke wrote my first song, (Mbikooye.”

Important to note is that at the time, she had mentioned Sheebah’s name more than all the song lyrics in her music catalogue combined. Some members of the public had already started displaying discomfort. 

“Sheebah lives rent free in your head,” one wrote. “You mean your post can’t go higher without her name included,” another added. 

However, a section of her fans have blamed the press for stoking the flames of the unceasing exchanges between the two artists by always asking them about each other. 

Note that they took the battle to Mbale, Dubai, and London. And Cindy also revealed in an interview that they are not physical enemies, they talk. Also note that it was the first time two female artists battled musically. Cindy might as well be preparing the public for another battle as the instigator, because it is business. Singers Bobi Wine and Bebe Cool had some of the fiercest battles in this town. From staging concerts on the day at different venues separated by a few roads and buildings to sharing stages, Business! Is it Cindy or the media feeding the monster?