According to media reports, singers Dhee and Kidakuzhi sang the song Enjoy Enjaami as part of their performance for the opening ceremony of the 44th Chess Olympiad which took place at the Nehru Indoor Stadium; the composer of the song, rapper Arivu wasn’t officially recognised for composing the song. Instead, music director Santosh Narayanan was credited for the same.
Media sources further reported that the exclusion of Arivu’s name from the credits was pointed out by many people on social media, causing Arivu to react to the whole controversy. On Sunday, he posted a photo of himself from the song’s music video, which he captioned, “Composed, Written, Sung & Performed Enjoy Enjaami. Nobody gave me a Tune, Melody or a Single word to write this one. Spent almost 6 months of sleepless and stressful nights and days for everything it is right now. No doubt it’s a great teamwork. No doubt it calls everyone together. But it doesn’t mean that’s not the history of Valliammal or the landless Tea plantation slave ancestors of mine. Every song of mine will be having the scarmark of this generational oppression. Like this Just One..(sic)”
Santosh released a letter on his Twitter account that explained the entire creative process behind Enjoy Enjaami. While Arivu claimed that it took almost six months for him to write the song, Santosh said in the letter that “The entire process of the ideation, composition, arrangement and recording the shoot version with all the lyrics of ‘Enjoy Enjaami’ was done in under 30 hours. As we had only a few hours to record ‘Enjoy Enjaami’ before the shoot, our process was swift, fun and spontaneous. (sic)”
Media sources reported that Santhosh distanced himself from the controversy surrounding the song’s composer and added that the revenues generated from the song were equally shared among the three of them (Arivu, Dhee and himself)
This is not the first time Arivu has found himself amid controversy as the composer of Enjoy Enjaami. In August 2021 a controversy broke out when Rolling Stone magazine, in the light of the global success of Enjoy Enjaami, honoured Dhee and Shan Vincent by putting them on its cover but failed to include Arivu.