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BURNA BOY: RISE OF THE AFRICAN GIANT

In many ways, Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu was always made for greatness, but for the longest time he was one of only a few who believed it. As it happens with those with the strongest wills, this inner conviction of who he was meant to be would prove sufficient to propel him to his destination. With his journey to the top of Nigerian (and African) music now complete, and as he soars to achieve a similar dominance at the global level, it is important to remember that, though he has slid into his star status with all the ease of a natural, his pathway to the summit was not always a straightforward one.

After a spell spent studying in the United Kingdom, which infamously ended in an arrest, Burna Boy returned to Nigeria to pursue his dream endeavour—music. The year was 2011, and Afrobeats—the dance-ready, percussion-focused medley of indigenous sounds with foreign influences—had taken flight. It was a pivotal time in Nigerian music, as the stars who had ruled the last decade—like D’Banj and 2baba—began to wane in influence, while the acts who would take the baton for the next decade, like Wizkid, Davido and Olamide, were taking the first steps of their careers.

In this mix, too, was Burna, and with neither the support of a major label nor an external source of financing in its place, he would have to make things work by himself. As a result of this, his earliest musical efforts, however excellent they were sonically, could not make a commensurate commercial and cultural impact. But he was not entirely alone. He was aided by his manager and mother, Bose Ogulu, who had some ties to the music industry; her father, Benson Idonije, was a music journalist who had managed Fela Kuti. Together with Aristokrat Records and its in-house producer, LeriQ, Burna Boy and his small band of creatives and executives sought to make a dent in Nigeria’s music market.

His earliest forays came via mixtapes. Burn notice: The Mixtape was the first of them, released in April 2011 on the strength of a few singles like “Remember The Titans” and “Wombolombo Something” that were making local ripples at the time in the Port Harcourt scene. He followed up in November with “Burn Identity,” and for this sequel he recruited national stars like Davido and Sauce Kid. These mixtapes were part of an elaborate build up to his debut album—in place of the EP format that is the more common route today. But before its arrival, he needed a spark, a breakout single that would establish him beyond the confines of his Port Harcourt base.

That would come in 2012’s “Like To Party,” which was as true a reflection of Burna’s carefree spirit as could be accurately transcribed in music. Set to dancehall and raggae production that favoured a more tranquil side of afropop, Burna created the perfect beachside song, turning the rejection of his affections—”I been begging but you no wan gree/ Say you you know want me” into a genuine excuse to craft the memorable, wild party. Ingredients like these are never wasted in the hands of the right chef, and Burna was able to draw from his uniquely guttural-yet-soulful vocal range and create what many regard to be his proper breakout single.

Burna Boy would bring all of this to his next release, “Tonight,” this time soaking in some sultriness to set this song in sensual waters. “Said tonight will be your night/ Gotta be doing something right,” he sings, as his chorus loops a single nonsensical word until it becomes the soothing balm for a Friday night’s groove after a work-filled week. For his efforts in 2012, Burna tied for first at the Headies rookie competition, which rewarded underground stars with a chance to perform on the stage of Nigeria’s premier music awards.

His introductions now out of the way, it was time to unveil a much-awaited debut album. Succinctly titled Leaving an Impact For Eternity, it was supported by a quartet of pre-released singles, (“Like To Party”, “Run My Race”, “Tonight” and “Yawa Dey”) whose quality foreshadowed good tidings for the album—a bar that Burna and LeriQ had no problems crossing with its release. They were in complementary form, working in dancehall, hip hop, reggae and elements from Fuji into the 19 track LP (for its deluxe). LeriQ shone especially in his ability to craft pop songs without dipping into the explosive Ghanaian-tinged production that was all the rave back then, the cloth from which Wizkid fashioned the bulk of his Superstar album—ensuring Burna Boy could light up a party with every bit of his distinctiveness intact.

L.I.F.E. was a scripting of Burna Boy’s status as he simultaneously affirmed his new position as an uprising star whilst arguing that he should be so much greater. You see, this drive, nearly bordering on discontent, has been the force behind his career, and the reason why his newfound material comforts—the fame and money—in no way slowed his momentum. Worsening economic conditions in Nigeria have made a few prospective endeavours choice paths for those seeking an escape from a harsh upbringing into a much better future. Music is one of these, but Burna Boy’s hunger has always been for greater things.

This drive, like the flip side of a coin, is also his weakness. In 2014, a year after his debut album had established a place for him in the industry, cracks began to appear in his lean, mean team. The first of these would come in July, when he appeared to relieve his mother of her managerial duties via a now-deleted twitter post, in which he infamously announced it was time to "let my mother be my mother and let my manager be my manager". Bose Ogulu would come out a few days later and attempt to throw some clarity to this statement, but while that episode was still playing out, word came out that he had left Aristokrat Records, the imprint under which he had released all previous music. That turned out to have been a mutual separation following contract expiration and non-renewal, but it effectively meant he would have to record his album without his mother-manager, Aristokrat Records or LeriQ, its in-house producer.

The result was about as bad as could be expected. Burna Boy had a rough 2015, most of it self-inflicted, so that at the time of the release of On A Spaceship, he had managed to threaten the media, exchange words with fellow artists, and berate award shows, and for anyone who had missed any of his shenanigans, he made the baffling decision of taping an interview of a journalist outlining his flaws and making it his album intro. That, save for the brooding, Fela-inspired album closer, "Soke", was the most exciting point of the album, the rest of which placed somewhere between forgettable and unoriginal. In the end it was clear that On A Spaceship, and the decisions that led to it, was a big misstep for Burna.

He would then spend 2016 reversing the wrong decisions that had brought him here. He mended fences with Aristokrat Records and was once more back with LeriQ, and though he would still release future music under the self-owned Spaceship Records, he could receive A&R guidance from his former label. Less than a year after On A Spaceship, he released Redemption, an EP celebrating not just these healed rifts but his re-entry to the UK, 5 years after he had received a ban for illegal activity. Redemption was also the earliest attempt to ‘westernise’ his sound, as he and LeriQ slid even deeper into his low-tempo grooves, emerging with a grinding dancehall joint like album opener, "Pree Me".

Redemption was not the instant return to top form that he might have envisaged, as it struggled to both reaffirm his national position and establish a foreign one in only 7 songs, but he was clearly making steps in the right direction. It would take two more years of work and creativity, and a return to Bose Ogulu as manager, for them to pay off, and this happened with his next album, Outside. It was named for Burna’s desire to stretch his influence beyond Nigerian and African borders, but it excels for his abilities to tie these diasporan visions to an African identity, a hurdle that Wizkid’s Sounds From The Other Side, also sharing this world-conquering vision, could not clear. In many ways, Outside was the birth of the Burna Boy’s superstardom: it was the perfection of the self-styled Afrofusion, where samples of Fela Kuti’s “Sorrow Tears And Blood” on “Ye” sit beside EDM on the titular track which sits beside the patois-dripping, ragga-influenced “Sekkle Down” which sits beside the ethereal, chest-thumping “Heaven’s Gate.” Burna Boy, the conductor of this mix, not only makes it work, but achieves cohesion in a way only he can.

The album also housed the sleeper hit “Ye”, which, with a tinge of luck supplied by publicity brought by the homonymous Kanye West album, took off for what was his first global hit. Outside was also the first lap of a three-year, three-album spell in which he asserted himself incontrovertibly in global conversations. African Giant, which came next in 2019, was fueled by the same Afrofusion cocktail, and with the album (and the circumstances surrounding its name) he introduced the world to his grandiloquence and the talent that inspired it, before 2020’s Twice As Tall clinched for him a much-coveted Grammy and brought to a fine conclusion his intercontinental dominance arc.

With last year’s Love, Damini released in his new status as a bonafide global superstar, and then becoming his most-streamed project, Burna Boy has now all but completed what ambitions must have spurred his entry into music in the first place: A host of major awards in the bag, unforgettable performances at some of the most iconic locations in the world, a teeming fanbase more than ready to draw arms in defence of his (many) gaffes. Knowing Burna, you would still not expect him to be satisfied.

With great talent sometimes comes an outsized desire to make it known to as many people as possible, and an ever-throbbing impulse that tells you you can do even more. Burna crams all of this triumphant euphoria into his latest single, “Sittin’ On Top Of The World," and while it marks some deviation from his patented Afrofusion, we can rest assured that Burna’s plans for his next album and era will embody every bit of the excellence he has exuded at every stage of his storied career thus far.

This article was written by Afrobeats City Contributor Ezema Patrick - @ezemapatrick (Twitter)

Afrobeats City doesn’t own the right to the images - image source: Instagram - @Burnaboygram

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