In January, when the Grammys recognized elite musicians from around the world, Burna Boy left empty-handed. However, there was a widespread feeling from his fanbase that he was on the verge of something great. The Nigerian superstar had a stellar year, releasing the dominant "African Giant" album and propelling his crossover journey with impressive numbers.
The Grammys would have been the perfect crowning achievement for Burna and for African pop music enthusiasts who hoped to consolidate the movement's burgeoning global influence. While that highlight was delayed, Damini Ogulu's impressive journey to global recognition continues unabated. Burna Boy, one of Nigeria's homegrown talents leading the charge to establish Afrobeats in Western pop spaces, uses the significance of his musical journey and cultural roots as fuel for his ambitions.
Africa’s giant entertainer is determined to extend Afrobeats’ reign on the global stage, supported by Atlantic Records, who have backed him through ‘Outside’ (2018) and ‘African Giant’ (2019).
Burna Boy: The Rise of the African Giant
As one of Nigeria’s homegrown talents leading the vanguard to entrench Afrobeats in Western pop spaces, Burna Boy wields the significance of his music journey and cultural roots as extra fuel for his ship. Africa’s giant entertainer is hell-bent on extending Afrobeats run on the global stage, with help from Atlantic Records who have backed him through ‘Outside (2018) and African Giant (2019).
Musicality and Themes
Burna Boy's fourth album lands in this powerful spotlight, continuing the singer’s boundary-hopping mixture of laid-back Caribbean swagger, Fela Kuti swing and multilingual communiques on a range of concerns. African Giant is a melodic and percussion-heavy album that feels slower and more complex than his club-friendly material, such as his 2015 hit Like To Party, that launched him to fame in Nigeria.
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The tunes range from sounding like the soundtrack to an after-party smoke, to a political rally with a touch of jazz, to the pool party of your dreams. Burna Boy fluctuates between English, Pidgin and Yoruba, and from singing to rapping. “Different style we delivering, I don’t have no equivalent,” Burna says on Different, which features Beninese Afropop music legend Angélique Kidjo and Damian Jr Gong Marley.
The song is exactly the kind of unexpected genre-blending of Caribbean and African music that makes Burna, Burna. The album features a diverse range of guests which reflect his burgeoning international profile, from Jorja Smith to US acts like Future, Jeremih and YG. There are plenty of artists with a political message - but very few with both the message and the talent Burna has for creatively relaying it.
Burna Boy fluctuates between English, Pidgin and Yoruba, and from singing to rapping. “Different style we delivering, I don’t have no equivalent,” Burna says on Different, which features Beninese Afropop music legend Angélique Kidjo and Damian Jr Gong Marley.
On “Show & Tell,” Burna meets Future halfway, exchanging tough talk as the flavor of his melodies seeps into the rapper’s Auto-Tune. Elsewhere, Burna is at his best either holding it down at home or tracing African influence beyond its shores. He trades blows with Zlatan on “Killing Dem,” each hyping up the other.
In his lyrics, Burna uncovers how rampant corruption inspired personal study. “Differently intelligent…/Different studying of my roots and origin/Tell my truth in melodies.” He can’t really be an African giant without speaking truth to power, after all, and he spends much of the album breaking down the narratives that have surrounded Nigeria since it gained independence in 1960.
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If the Nigerian elite won’t stop amassing wealth, Burna suggests, then he can’t slow down in his pursuit of money either. He comes off both impressed by their appetites and anxiously aware of an expanding fiscal imbalance.
Romance comes in strong, with Jorja Smith harmonizing sweetly on R&B cut “Gum Body,” singing “Girl I just want make we gum body / Don't want to lose you to nobody no.” Empowering political narratives lay side by side with odes to lovers. This alters the cohesion of the message.
There are moments on Burna Boy’s African Giant that feel like you are a part of something special by listening - something bigger than you. But that feeling isn’t clear enough to linger for the duration of the project. Burna’s conscious message is muffled.
The intro to Another Story samples a documentary on the history of Nigeria and focuses on the fact that Nigeria was born as a business deal between the British and local chiefs. Wetin Man Go Do, a song about poverty in Nigeria is cleverly followed by Dangote, which refers to Aliko Dangote, the richest man in Africa.
Burna Boy both acknowledges the hard economic situations that Nigerians face while encouraging them to keep working. The music video opens with “The richest man in Africa still goes to work every morning. Employment and job creation should be the priority for any government.
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Global Impact and Influences
African Giant leads with sounds from Africa, backed by layered messaging and cultural symbolism. The album artwork is inspired by the first Nigerian Ten Naira note which features Alvan Ikoku, one of the country’s foremost educationists and activists. Other symbols include “BB7”(Burna Boy 7), representing his seventh body of work; serial style numbers representing his date of birth, images of his grandfather and father with him as a baby depicting generational transition, and a stack of gold coins suggesting a single African currency backed by gold.
“Tell them Africa we done tire, here comes the African Giant,” he declares on the title track, putting himself forward in messianic language. It’s a familiar theme that travels back to the origins of Afrobeats. Burna, whose grandfather Benson Idonije once managed the legend, draws from that sonic ancestry to deliver pointed messages to fellow Nigerians.
Key to accomplishing this is Burna’s rich understanding of the music that he plays with. The shared DNA between R&B, rap, reggae, funk, and afrobeat allow the singer to mess with the sounds and techniques of music he grew up on, like King Sunny Ade or Bob Marley or DMX. He not only finds the intersection points between a whole diaspora of music, but expands them.
African Giant is Nigeria’s biggest homegrown effort with a solid measure of local ownership and a narrative that isn’t sacrificed or weakened as a prerequisite for global appeal. In Burna’s world, belief in self, family, love and community - all core African values - come first. Taking African culture to the world is the foundation upon which the push for globalisation is built on.
As the world increasingly looks to the continent as the new frontier for inspiration and cultural inclusion, it’s a great time to be African. Post-Black Panther, we are witnessing African music starting to experience globalisation of its sounds.
His talent is far-reaching, he thrives on blurring genre lines, and enjoys a healthy backing from the African diaspora community. He is connected to Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, amplifies traditional sounds, has his mother at the wheel of his career, and inspires pride in the hearts of fans from the whole of Africa.
Burna is also evolving and maturing into his voice on the album. When you read interviews or hear Burna Boy talk, you very quickly realize how seriously he takes his music and Nigerian pop as a whole, gushing over artists who have inspired him. Listening to African Giant bears that devotion and appreciation out; a well-crafted and acute record that shows its creator to be a musical chameleon.
He effectively adapts a diverse set of influences and techniques into his sound in a way that only the finest songwriters can do. African Giant is easily Burna Boy’s most cohesive and strongest project, with even the diverse list of guest stars-from Damien Marley to Nigerian rapper Zlatan to Jeremih and Future-being used expertly without overkill. Burna Boy is the true star at the center. He wears the title well.
From his 2012 breakthrough in Nigeria with the experimental “Like To Party,” he’s worked his way up through six projects, building a career characterized by experimentation. From the start, he could release a dancehall hit in the morning, and by weekend, hug the radio waves for a Highlife number. All this makes the journey to his seventh project, African Giant, a historic moment in the trajectory of African pop music.
Burna Boy with this album has accomplished in bringing Afropop as a genre closer into the public eye. The album altogether is riddled with infectious rhythms, and make it hard to resist the urge to bop your head to the beat. The backend of the album is weaker than the rest of the album but altogether the project is a must listen for lovers of Afropop and rhythm.
Critical Reception
With 19 tracks, African Giant feels a little longer than what’s desired for one sitting. Perhaps for his next album, we can hope to see Burna put out fewer songs with a more targeted punch, as he hones in on how to say more with less. But this is Burna Boy flexing his full muscles. Now watch him climb up those festival billings.
African Giant arrives in the winding days of summer and, like a bizarro version of a groundhog seeing its shadow, the phenomenal new record feels like it was made specifically to extend the season. Burna Boy’s his enigmatic voice hovers over majestic, low-tempo funk that blends dancehall and Afropop production; the result is the most magic summer soundtrack to come around in awhile.
African Giant will certainly be seen as Burna Boy’s crossover moment, establishing him as a capable global artist. But, as Burna Boy’s profile has risen, he has avoided the mistakes that plague so many genre-blurring breakouts, which is thinking that one’s style needs to be sanitized in order to cross into the mainstream.
In fact, in interviews, Burna has made it clear this is something he feels passionate about. “An American artist can come to Africa and rap his English rap with his slangs that we don’t even get, but we say it,” Burna Boy told The Atlantic recently, doubling down on his commitment that he doesn’t need to adapt to the mainstream.
Burna Boy knows the power of his voice. He sings about the unjust power of fear over people’s lives on “Collateral Damage” with overwhelming emotional. The overarching message of African Giant is the sprawling influence of Africa across the world and across music.
I've enjoyed journeying into the world of Afrobeats, and this album is no exception. It's a full hour worth of fun, summer grooves. Anybody and On The Low were my favorite songs.
Powering through with heavily Fela Kuti inspired sounds & persona, African Giant is an appropriate statement to a bold claim made earlier in the year by the Afrobeats crooner. The album provides a decent blend of rugged, hard-beat party starters & culture crossing features to satisfy any listener. Quite frankly deserving of every accolade it’s receiving.
| Track | Features |
|---|---|
| Gum Body | Jorja Smith |
| Show & Tell | Future |
| Different | Angelique Kidjo, Damian Marley |
| This Side | YG |
