Will the real Burna Boy please sit down
The increasingly self-destructive behaviour of Nigeria’s biggest musical export since Fela Kuti could derail the ride of a lifetime. And show foreigners what Nigerians have known all along.
In a marked departure from the fawning platitudes that have greeted Burna Boy at sold-out concerts in western capitals, his seventh studio album, I Told Them…, got a considerably muted critical reception when it was released this August. Audience fatigue? Perhaps. But what other factors could have been at play?
Try Burna Boy’s own hubris.
Since his global breakthrough album, 2019’s Grammy nominated African Giant, Burna Boy’s entire brand narrative has been about global Blackness. He has talked about building a “bridge” between Africa and its diaspora. But when Chakabars Clarke, an influencer, asked him about the importance of that reconnection – a simple enough question and Burna Boy had had at least five years of preparation for – the response turned into a rant. In the video, since widely circulated, he talked about Chinese and Italian immigrants having a connection to their home, as opposed to African-Americans, who he said had forgotten their roots.
There was instant backlash, and Burna’s response was typically defensive. “There is nothing I said that Malcolm X didn’t say. There’s nothing I said that the honourable Louis Farrakhan didn’t say,” he would charge in a later interview with Complex, a US pop culture media platform.
The international community was introduced to the Burna Boy that long-suffering fans at home had long known.
“The international audience hasn’t been as critical of him as they should, and I think this comes from not understanding him the way Nigerians – his early supporters – do,” says Nelson CJ, a Lagos-based culture journalist whose critical coverage of Burna Boy has drawn the ire of Outsiders – the superstar’s internet stans.
In the past, Burna Boy’s controversial antics, which range from derisive comments to deeply disturbing actions, have mostly targeted fellow Nigerians.
While promoting I Told Them… for instance, Burna Boy told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that “Afrobeats is mostly about nothing, literally nothing. There is no substance to it, nobody is talking about anything. It’s just a great time, an amazing time.” Afrobeats is the catch-all term that has come to represent Nigerian pop music.
Prior to that at his New Year’s Day concert in Lagos, Burna Boy kept his Nigerian fans waiting for six hours, before blaming the organisers for doing a shoddy job with logistics.
In 2022, Burna Boy’s police escorts reportedly shot up a Lagos club after a woman declined Burna Boy’s invitation to join him in the VIP section. Two people were injured. Security guards affiliated with Burna Boy were arrested and charged with attempted murder and the woman later accused the singer and his family of trying to silence her with hush money.
“Burna is a great artist no doubt but a troubled and troublesome person…”
That same year, in a messy Twitter brawl, Ghanaian artist Shatta Wale accused Burna Boy of rape. Shatta Wale also casually admitted to having done the same. Burna Boy didn’t specifically respond to the rape allegations but dismissed Shatta Wale with, “fighting a pig will only leave you dirty. I really let this pig get to me but I promise this is the last time I will ever allow myself to stoop to this level.”
In 2017, Burna Boy was questioned by police for his alleged involvement in a robbery and attack on Nigerian artist Mr 2Kay, who later withdrew the charges.
All this mess has made for a complicated relationship with his home audience, who have often made do with “separating the art from the artist”, though even his most ardent followers will admit how exhausting this has been. “Burna is a great artist no doubt but a troubled and troublesome person,” says Dika Ofoma, a journalist and filmmaker who also identifies as a fan of the “African Giant”.
Burna Boy appears to have no particular appreciation of the disorienting dance his fans do around his personality to continue enjoying his art. On Thanks, the distasteful track which closes I Told Them…, Burna Boy adopts an ill-fitting victim posture, dismissing concerns about his conduct with nary a hint of self-reflection. “Is this the motherfucking thanks I get?/For making my people proud every chance I get?” he asks on the track.
And lately, he is not making things easy for himself with other fanbases. “That image of Burna Boy as we know it was built up by foreign media, but I also have to admit that he has been peerless when it came to the music,” says Motolani Alake, a music executive who has covered Burna Boy as a journalist. “But the seams have started to show over the past year.
He has gotten comfy in his success and has started to show off parts that only Nigerians have known all along.”
Courting foreign audiences
Nigerians warmly received Burna Boy’s 2013 debut album L.I.F.E. But back then, he was just a young, talented kid from Port Harcourt with an alternative Afrofusion sound – a mash-up of flavours ranging from Fela Kuti’s afrobeat to reggae, R&B and jazz. “In the beginning his sound and style weren’t mainstream. People weren’t sure what to do with him even after he transcended that barrier. Nigerians did not fully embrace him until the international community did. We knew he was talented and made good music, but he wasn’t well-regarded for it. I think that bred some contempt,” Ofoma explains.
Removed from the core Lagos music scene, he didn’t immediately dislodge peers Wizkid and Davido who were anointed the next princes of Nigerian music. Sensing some resistance to his outsized ambitions, Burna Boy looked away from home for new audiences.
Preparation met opportunity after the release of Burna Boy’s 2018 mixtape Outside and the accidental uptake of his single Ye, which was streamed by loads of Kanye West fans.
By the time Burna Boy entered his African Giant era in 2019, he had managed to craft a socially conscious brand with a message of Black solidarity that was welcoming to the global communities seeking him out. This culminated in his Grammy win for Twice as Tall in the Global Album category.
At home, his rebrand was received mostly with mild amusement. It was tough to reconcile this image of “global community shaper” with the chaotic person police charged in the attack on a fellow Nigerian artist, who also appeared to be on the run from British authorities. (While attending college in the United Kingdom, Burna Boy was sent to jail as a minor for his involvement in a gang-related stabbing and later released on parole. He was only able to reenter the country years later).
Perhaps more importantly, despite positioning himself as a socially conscious artist and sampling Fela Kuti’s lyrics on songs like Ye and Collateral Damage, Burna Boy stayed out of real world social movements like 2020’s #EndSARS that demanded allyship.
He practically had to be bullied into showing his support to the most important youth movement of this generation. Thus, to a Nigerian ear, a song like Monsters You Made and its powerful lyrics denouncing colonisation, sounded hollow, impeccable musicianship notwithstanding.
“Artists are not politicians or activists and I don’t like that we put this pressure on them. But for Burna Boy, there seems to be a dishonesty about him because he is always found wanting when it comes time to walk the talk,” says Alake.
Nelson CJ adds: “I think we can take his music much more seriously than his politics. The latter hardly serves anyone but himself.”
And there is a lot to take seriously in the music on I Told Them… and its condensed restraint, compared to the bloat of Burna Boy’s last two records. It plays like a really good time, leaning into 90s American hip hop and obvious self-celebration. The album is a reminder of how great Burna Boy is at making feel-good, even relatable music when he sets his mind to it.