Composer Santhosh Narayanan has claimed that the collaborators who worked on 'Enjoy Enjaami' have not received any financial compensation to date. The song was released in 2021.
In 2021, one song took the Internet by storm. Composed by Santhosh Narayanan, and sung by Dhee and Arivu, ‘Enjoy Enjaami’ took over the world. However, the song is back in the news following a controversy that has erupted between Santhosh Narayanan and AR Rahman.
Santhosh Narayanan took to his social media on the third anniversary of ‘Enjoy Enjaami.’ He put out a video on his X (formerly known as Twitter) account and said that he along with the other collaborators received no financial compensation from the song which was streamed over a billion times on multiple platforms.
He said, “We were approached with owning 100 percent of the rights, revenues, and royalties from this song. We were so happy. The song connected well and had over a billion streams cumulatively across all platforms. I want to spill the beans on how much we received in net income or revenue to date, three artists put together. We received a whopping zero cents from this song.”
Take a look at the video here.
Reacting to this statement, A R Rahman said that he was not aware of people not receiving compensation. The Times Of India quoted the composer saying, “I just mentored the YAALL festival and the idea, as it is Tamil music catered to international audiences. The idea was great. I don't have any financial benefit or shareholding in the company, I just did this out of goodwill… All the videos of me mentoring were pulled out long ago.” Following this statement, Santhosh Narayanan tweeted that not just AR Rahman but many other artists including him have also not been paid.
‘Enjoy Enjaami’ talked about a man’s relationship with his cultural roots. The song was released by Maajja, an independent label based out of Toronto and Chennai. The label was founded by A.R. Rahman, Noel Kirthiraj, Sen Sachi, and Prasana Balachandran.