For Burna Boy, success is a cosmic blessing. “The universe could have chosen anyone in the world, but it chose me,” says the Afrobeat superstar they call the African Giant, his voice sonorous and thoughtful as he considers a 14-year career that has revolutionised the standing of Nigerian music on the world stage. “That’s something I’m forever grateful for and I don’t take it for granted.”
The numbers, certainly, are astronomical. Billions of streams have made this Port Harcourt native — born Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu — Spotify’s biggest Sub-Saharan African artist. Eleven Grammy nominations made him the most celebrated Nigerian act in the history of the awards. In 2023 he became the first African artist to sell out a US stadium show; this year he became the first to earn over 10 million equivalent album sales worldwide. By embedding his trademark Afrobeats, reggae and dancehall style at the heart of the western mainstream — and working alongside the likes of Ed Sheeran, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Dave, Stormzy and, on new album No Sign of Weakness, Mick Jagger and Travis Scott — he’s become a breakthrough icon, modernising and popularising African music very much on its own terms.
Yet, as he lands in the UK for a spot alongside Drake at this weekend’s Wireless festival and a free show for fans at Kentish Town Forum, it actually marks something of a homecoming. Though he’s of impeccable Afrobeats heritage (his grandfather managed Fela Kuti), a pre-fame Ogulu moved from his hometown of Port Harcourt in Nigeria to London for a spell, and also studied media technology and communications in Brighton and Oxford.
“London taught me to be a man, first of all,” he says from his home in the capital, fresh from a whistle-stop promo tour of Germany. “It’s not exactly a holiday spot for me, it’s almost like a second home. A lot of experiences I had growing up that shaped me into the man I am today happened in London. I’d love to be a better man but I wouldn’t want to be any less than the man I am today and I have London to thank for that in every way.”
It was back in Nigeria, though, that the old gods smiled on him. “My drive comes from my ancestors,” he says, “something that’s far greater than me.” Channelling the music of Kuti, Bob Marley and King Sunny Adé into the self-dubbed “Afro-fusion” of his 2013 debut album LIFE, he sold 40,000 copies on the first day of release and became an overnight local hero. By the time of his 2019 fourth album African Giant, including production from Skrillex, mainstream pop and hip-hop elements were helping him reach a global audience — it became the best-selling African album of all time in the UK. And it was an elevated platform from which Ogulu would shout about numerous social issues affecting his home continent.
African Giant itself was a sonic dissection of the turbulent history of Nigeria, tackling the country’s political corruptions, poverty and inner-city struggles, going as deep as to condemn the 19th-century colonial rule of the Royal Niger Company in Another Story. The album positioned Ogulu as a leading voice against African oppression: he’d go on to boycott South Africa following the 2019 Johannesburg riots which targeted foreign Africans, and spoke loudly against police brutality in Nigeria. “He represents change, and speaks out against injustice while representing young Africa and making worldwide hits,” said BBC radio presenter DJ Target.
Ogulu’s overriding cause is one of pan-Africanism, the concept of building bridges of solidarity between all people of African ancestry across the world. “The moment the pan-African dream comes to reality, which is the moment we all come together under one black umbrella, that’s the moment all our troubles come to an end, worldwide, for everyone,” he says. “When we’re all one people as opposed to how it is now, where we’re all divided due to no fault of ours. But now it’s on us to fix it. That’s my pan-African drive, bringing us all together and creating a bridge between one another to make sure that we’re all one family.”
It’s not all righteous political tub-thumping in Burnaworld, mind. The cover art of No Sign of Weakness finds Ogulu sitting contemplatively in an armchair while eavesdropping models wearing masks of his face hold up signs reading “Love”, “Resilience”, “Prayer”, “Party!” and “Endurance”. As he explains, “The album cover is really what the album is.” So while a track like Empty Chairs (featuring Jagger, like Scott on recent single TaTaTa, recorded remotely “but all great experiences nonetheless”) highlights the plight of artists rising from lowly backgrounds only to face establishment backlash for daring to escape, there’s also plenty of loverman R&B and hip-hop braggadocio on display.
TaTaTa, for instance, is a classic Afrobeats horndog banger smothered in lascivious autotuned raps and wolf-whistles aimed at a passing beauty, like a white van man upgraded to a Lambo. Even its reference to Baltasar Engonga, an Equatorial Guinean official who was removed from office when 400 sex tapes featuring women linked to powerful figures were found on his personal device, is no anti-corruption dig. “He’s an absolute legend!” Ogulu chuckles. He also laughs off the Standard’s suggestion that the low-riding Bundle by Bundle, with its images of flying banknotes and sly reference to United Bank for Africa chairman Tony Elumelu, might be a surreptitious comment on the continent’s financial issues.
“It’s really just a song I wrote for Christmas time in Lagos,” he says. “We have a tradition in Nigeria where at certain ceremonies it gets really lavish and we throw money on each other. It’s a cultural traditional thing, it happens at weddings, it happens at birthdays, it happens at Christmas parties. Things that my people feel are worth celebrating, you would see ‘Bundle by Bundle’ situations.” It’s important, he argues, not to make everything entirely serious in his music. “It is [serious], but not all the time because at the end of the day we need to create the balance in life. Without the balance we can’t really be human and we always find a way to be human in the situations we find ourselves in.”
In making the record, Ogulu followed his usual other-worldly instincts. “It’s not rocket science,” he says. “It’s the same old spirits, the same old light that comes from darkness, because before light there’s darkness” — he pulls out a biblical reference — “‘Let there be light!’ So for me, somewhere in the balance, somewhere in between there the guidance is always perfect and has always been, so I stay there.”
It’s an uncalculated approach that has also seen Ogulu — famed for his dreadlocks, shades, chains and flamboyant taste in hats, from the designer party crown to the none-more-timely cowboy hat — held up as a style guru. He was named one of GQ’s Best Dressed Men earlier this year, and an Instagram account called Burnaboyoutfits exists solely to direct wannabe Burnas to where they can pick up identical threads.
“As far as I’m concerned I’ve always had my style and it’s always been a style that’s been appealing to me and has become appealing to others,” Ogulu grins. “It’s just natural, the style is natural, it’s not made in a lab, there’s no label staff arrangement. This is who I am and this is how I give it up, man.”
It seems that every avenue of culture he touches — be it fashion, activism or becoming an iconic, pioneering figure for African music — becomes indelibly scorched with Burna Boy’s image. “That’s the best I can do, to leave an impact,” he says. “Hopefully for eternity.”
Burna Boy plays Wireless Festival on Sunday 13th July. His new album, No Sign of Weakness is out on 11th July.
