While Ghanaians, particularly the gospel music fraternity, are celebrating Joe Mettle’s Artiste of the Year win as a first for the genre, it has emerged that he is not.

Apparently, gospel music group, Daughters of Glorious Jesus achieved that feat in 2004 when they bagged the Artiste of the Year award.

Joe Mettle at the wee hours of Sunday, April 9 beat E.L, Sarkodie, Stonebwoy, MzVee, and Medikal to claim the bragging rights as Ghana’s topmost artiste.

The ‘Onwanwani’ hit singer thus holds the bragging rights as the best artiste in Ghana for a year, and was thought to be the first gospel artiste to attain this.

But Nii Ayite Hammond, PRO of the Ghana Music Awards said in a Facebook post on Monday that, “Point of correction, Joe Mettle is not the first gospel Artiste to win the Artiste of the year but he is the first gospel Artiste to win the topmost award at the VGMA. Daughters of Glorious Jesus were the first gospel artiste to win the Artiste of the year in 2004.”

Mr Hammond explained in an interview with Myjoyonline.com that when Daughters of Glorious Jesus won the Artiste of the Year, the most Popular Song of the Year was the topmost award. Thus, VIP which won the most popular song of the year in those awards won the topmost award.

He added that the rules were changed in 2008 making the Artiste of the Year, the topmost award.

Nonetheless, Ghana Music Awards PRO says Joe Mettle still made history.

The gospel artiste, according to him, has made history by being the first gospel artiste to win the topmost award, Artiste of the Year, since the rules changed in 2008.

Apart from the Artiste of the Year award, he beat Ogya Mensah, Afriyie, Akwaboah, Sonnie Badu, and Ernest Opoku to win the Best Male Vocalist of the Year award.

He also picked up the Gospel Artiste of the Year award.