Nigerian Afrobeats star Burna Boy burst onto the global scene in 2018 with a slew of irresistible hits on his third album, Outside, paired with compulsive looks and devilish charm. The Grammy and BET Awards helped solidify his status within a highly competitive global music industry.
Prior to his international success, cemented by his latest offering Love, Damini (2022), Burna spent years experimenting with different sounds in London and South Africa, and his ragga-inspired vocal style became special.
His 2014 contribution to South African hip hop group AKA’s infectious track All Eyes on Me first put him on the African radar. His blistering hit on the multi-award winning single made all the difference and showed that he was an artist to watch, channeling West African and Jamaican musical tastes.
Although he was considered talented by his South African hip hop peers, his brilliance remained somewhat muted. He had to return to his native Nigeria to achieve the level of success he obviously craved: awards, global tours and A-list industry connections.
Although a whirlwind rise, with an enigmatic combination of singing styles and influences, Burna Boy has, at least for now, gone mainstream; a slightly compliant agent of the commercial music industry. (The same is true of most of today’s Afrobeats stars, even if this is a Faustian truth everyone can choose to ignore.)
In Love, Damini (he was born Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu) Burna still exudes just the right amount of foreboding and palpable intrigue to remain believable as an artist. But how much of its much-vaunted originality is left? Perhaps one way to answer this question is to review his musical influences.
Seeing his influences
It’s hard not to love club bangers like Soke, Ye, Gbona and On the Low, all produced before Burna Boy’s groundbreaking 2021 Grammy win with his fifth album, Twice as Tall (2020 ).
On most of these tracks, Fela Kuti’s influence is clear in the samples and the unmistakable rise of the various hooks. To many, it looked like Burna was the heir to Kuti.
In the late 1960s, Nigerian musician and singer Kuti, along with his amazing bands, almost single-handedly pioneered a genre called Afrobeat. This sound included strong pan-African politics, intricate call-and-response songs, and heavy West African drums accompanied by catchy jazz and funk riffs. Afrobeats is an umbrella term for a more commercial friendly version of Kuti’s Afrobeat.
Burna Boy’s Kuti credentials seem impeccable. His maternal grandfather, broadcaster and jazz enthusiast Benson Idonije, had managed Kuti in the 1960s. In an interview, his mother and manager, business woman Bose Ogulu, reportedly refers to Kuti as the closest thing she had to with a godfather.
Burna has also been influenced by ragga, dub and grime since his student days in the UK. The foundations of these genres were laid mainly in Jamaica, but found fresh creative wings in the urban music scenes of the United Kingdom. This culminated in a hit like Burna’s 2017 song Rock your Body.
Even before the arrival of Love, Damini, Burna Boy had managed to fuse his diverse cultural and sonic experiences into a powerful aural stew.
Burna has not only mastered the Jamaican sound. He has also adopted the rough-boy persona with tales of private security shootings, rape allegations and a trail of broken hearts clouding his already menacing aura.
Ways to weigh Burna
Naturally, Burna intended to act as a sort of generational mouthpiece for a restless and growing Afropolitan brigade. It could not be otherwise as it was fed a diet inspired by the Box of Pan-Africanism and neo-colonial resistance. By most standards, that’s heavy stuff for a market and generation caught up in instant gratification.
And then he hit the musical art with his eclectic preparation of West African rhythms, West Indian jungle grooves and the all-encompassing spread of hip hop. Burna once described a portion of this gumbo as “pepperoni pizza” with Kuti’s Afrobeat as the topping. There is nothing particularly unique about this recipe. Instead, the X-factor can be found in its winning combination of ingredients – paired with an engaging personality. Of course, there’s also his amazing sampling prowess to ponder.
He has stated that his brand of music is a new genre called Afrofusion. Perhaps this is just a way to use the new success to greater effect. A way to distinguish yourself from the huge crowd of Afrobeats aspiring.
For the uninitiated, Burna Boy’s sound is pure genius. But for those familiar with Kuti, with the Jamaican godfather of dub, Lee “Scratch” Perry, and similar genres of Caribbean toast (lyric singing over dancehall music), it all seems a bit déjà vu.
There are different ways to weigh Burna. If you put him up against Kuti, Perry and the dub greats, he is definitely a minor. But in an era of incessantly Instagrammed, photographed and endlessly reproduced, he is a giant brimming with substance, creative menace and yet to be deciphered.
Burna was born from the powerful foundations of Afrobeat, hip hop, ragga, grime, drum ‘n’ bass and dub related sounds. There is no other foundation as deep as these. His work, so far, has mostly consisted of translating and reconfiguring those jungle-laden sounds for a mass audience.
In this regard, it is a faithful conduit, a vehicle for simmering, unruffled, almost soulful grooves. Sometimes, it’s not even sure Burna knows the depth of what she’s channeling. If he did, he wouldn’t be so eager to pair up with every hot music star that hits the scene.
Burna’s lyrics on hits such as Last Last (2022) are filled with profanity, nonsense and nonsensical rhymes that sound good to the ears, especially if you don’t understand West African pidgin. This is another aspect of his work that can be quite confusing; sudden oscillations between sense and absurdity, pseudo-philosophical gravity and utter sterility.
It is converted to dollars
Burna has recently launched a campaign to achieve even greater success. Just look at his high-profile collaborations with American musicians Pop Smoke and Beyoncé, as well as UK pop stars like Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran and Stormzy or Nigerian singer Wizkid.
By now, some of his hits are starting to sound a little tired, cheesy or thoughtless. But maybe that doesn’t matter as long as the dollars, brand endorsements and festival invitations keep rolling in. In today’s music industry, that’s all that matters.
Burna Boy has conquered the world and retained his sense of menace, but it remains to be seen how much of his true creative spirit he has left.
This article was updated to more accurately reflect Bose Ogulu’s biography.
