It’s official: Burna Boy is now an acknowledged international star! Yes, about time the world sat up and took notice. Not that this comes as a surprise to many of his diehard fans and I’ll like to count myself as one of those people I call the ‘Day One Fans of Burna Boy’ (real name, Damini Ogulu). Still, it’s somewhat gratifying to see Burna Boy popping up everywhere these days. Nowadays, it seems wherever I turn on the airwaves, Burna Boy is bound to show up– from one international stage to another. Just the other day, he was a guest of the ‘Breakfast Club’ which airs on Power 105.1 FM, New York. I watched his interview with the hosts, Charlemagne Tha’ God, DJ Envy and Angela Yee on their Youtube channel. Davido has also been on that show.
Before we get to all that, let’s try to retrace Burna Boy’s recent footsteps. It isn’t quite two years that Burna Boy was implicated in an armed robbery case by the police. He allegedly contracted people through his road manager, Joel Kantiock, to rob fellow artiste, Mr 2kay, at a hotel in Lagos to teach him a lesson. Around that time, the artiste was generally AWOL and when he wasn’t being absent, there were all sorts of complaints about his conduct and tardiness to shows. His rants on social media certainly didn’t help matters. In fact, it seemed like we were watching what could be the unravelling of this great talent. There must have been more than one opinion article along the lines of ‘The rise and fall of Burna Boy’. Mind you, some of these people were Burna Boy’s fans who were speaking out because they feared their musical idol could end up like many other great artistes who showed great potential but failed to fulfil their promise for all kinds of reasons. Think Majek Fashek.
But on January 26, 2018, Burna Boy released, Outside, billed as his third studio album. His first was L.I.F.E (Leaving an Impact For Eternity), followed by On a Spaceship. There was also a 7-track EP titled ‘Redemption.’ The 13-track Outside had collaborations with two English singers, Lily Allen on the song Heaven’s Gate and Mabel McVey on the song, Outside. It won the Album of the Year at the 2018 Nigeria Entertainment Awards. Ye, one of the songs on that album, was also adjudged one of the biggest songs of 2018. Expectedly, people’s attention got turned back to his music. Before long, however, another controversy ensued. This time, it had something to do with Burna Boy’s invitation to perform at Coachella, an annual music and arts festival held at the Coachella Valley in the Colorado Desert; at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California. Ordinarily, this should have been something to rejoice over but things didn’t go quite like that because Burna Boy took issues with the organisers, claiming that small font size was used for his name and its positioning on the promo materials. Size of the fonts for artistes’ names shows how they’re rated. And in voicing his displeasure, Burna Boy had referred to himself as an African giant who deserved better.
As usual, there were those waiting for such an opportunity offered them by Burna Boy’s displeasure to cut him to size. Jokes about font sizes and African giant trended on social media for a while. It doesn’t take much to distract us. As I mentioned last week when I was talking about ‘The Tacha in all of us’, we are only too happy to avoid real issues. There’s also the very Nigerian habit of waiting to kick people when they’re down or appear to be down. It happened when Anthony Joshua lost his last fight against Andy Ruiz (Jnr). These people usually don’t appear when the going is good.
But I digress. Suffice to say that at the time, I had queried why anyone would be surprised Burna Boy was calling himself an African giant when his very first album was titled L.I.F.E (Leaving an Impact For Eternity). What’s an ordinary giant compared to eternity? Of course, Burna Boy went on to give a good account of himself at Coachella. The rest of 2018 appeared to have gone well. This year has gone even better. There was the BET Awards for Best International Act which was accepted on his behalf by his mother and manager, Bose Ogulu. Then came the Lion King: The Gift album project with Beyoncé where some Nigerian artistes featured– Tiwa Savage, David O, Yemi Alade, Wizkid, Tekno, even the lone Ghanaian, Shatta Wale. Burna Boy was the only with a standalone song, Jara E.
In all, this is a good time for Nigerian artistes.
END
Be the first to comment