With the conversation raging on about the collaboration between secular artistes and gospel artistes, pundits Arnold Asamoah-Baidoo and OB Nartey have gone head to head in a spirited clash.

On the one hand, OB Nartey has still maintained that he does not see the sense in gospel artistes collaborating with secular artistes; especially on gospel tracks.

Arnold Asamoah-Baidoo has joined the opposition camp filled with many other stakeholders who feel the pastor and gospel singer is out of his mind for kicking against collaborations between gospel and secular musicians.

The clash was so fierce this time that he host of the review, Kwasi Aboagye, had to take them off-air for sanity to prevail.

OB Nartey argued that is improper for a track to be called a gospel track if it features a secular musician.

"I don’t mind if Joe Mettle does a peace song with Stonebwoy. It is for the peace of Ghana. But it shouldn’t be that Joe Mettle will feature Stonebwoy on a song and they want to address it as a gospel song,” OB Nartey said. “We can’t say Celestine Donkor’s song is gospel when she has featured Efya, a secular musician on it.

“Gospel music is about the song i.e. the lyrics, it’s about the personality and it’s about the spirit behind it. You cannot serve two masters, you cannot mix them up. I’m not saying we cannot be friends but when it comes to music, we are propagating a certain message and it must not be diluted with the brands and identities.”

Arnold fired back that the line of argument was immature and confusing.

“If you’ve followed this industry for a very long time and say a collaboration between a gospel artiste and a secular artiste will be wholeheartedly accepted, then you’re lying to yourself. Interestingly, this reaction is not limited to only Ghana. It is worse in the US,” Arnold said, citing Kirk Franklin’s collaborations with some secular artistes.

"During OB’s submission, he said you can’t serve two masters. So I was scratching my head and asking who are these two masters? They are God and Satan so it means secular musicians are of Satan. That is nonsense. That is implicitly nonsense.”

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“We are shortsighted to the extent that when we talk about collaboration, we only see two artistes collaborating on a song and forget that from songwriting to production, it is done by a secular personality like Akwaboah, Kaywa, Kwabena Kwabena. Are these Hindus? Which master are they serving?” he asked.

“The Executive Producer who will market and distribute what you term quintessential gospel is secular. Which of these masters do the radio presenters who give your songs airplay serve? The platform, the event organizer serves which master? So the issue about serving two masters is bogus. How you see Efya is how you judge her but they forget that those who claim to be gospel have worse characters.”

At this point, OB Nartey replied.

"We are not the standard so make a cogent argument. You’re opening up the argument talking about platforms and others but this is not what we are talking about. Your argument is flawed. You’re not making sense.”

“Shut the hell up!” Arnold retorted on the show.

With OB Nartey immediately replying with his: “You too shut the hell up”.

"I didn’t speak when you were speaking. You’re not correct. Shut up. Are you the one to tell me the terms of argument?”

Arnold clapped back. “You’re being stupidly loud. You shouldn’t have come here with your stupidity. Ghanaians are insulting you because you’re an ignoramus and unwise.”