bese!\u201d<\/p>\n
Burna Boy is soaring over the crowd at Amsterdam\u2019s Ziggo Dome, yelling the Yoruba term that loosely means \u201cmove your legs.\u201d His six-foot-one frame explodes into the air, seemingly powered by enough energy to fuel the Space Drift Tour race car he zoomed onto the stage in earlier. Wearing a blue custom Botter jumpsuit, he looks like some kind of Afro-futurist astronaut, ready to fly even higher.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe gives his all. And when he comes off [stage], you\u2019ll see him in the dressing room, falling flat out on the floor and shaking,\u201d says his younger sister Ronami Ogulu, who\u2019s also his stylist and creative director. \u201cThen he comes up and we patch him all together and we go again the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n
Three days later, Burna is in South London and decidedly more earthbound, slouched in an antique red leather chair. He takes long, drawn-out puffs from his Backwood, taking care that his denim Off-White ensemble doesn\u2019t turn into a designer ashtray. He speaks in aphorisms, like \u201cIt is better to stick with the devils you know\u201d (why he keeps family, including his sister and \u201cmomager\u201d Bose Ogulu, on his team) and \u201cI hope for the best and am prepared for the worst\u201d (when he thinks about the future of the African continent). When he laughs, tiny diamond tooth gems glint at the edges of his kilowatt smile. When he\u2019s finished answering a question, he gestures toward me with his hand and sternly commands, \u201cProceed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Especially for a fellow African who shares his passion for our motherland, an audience with Burna feels a bit like one with a dignitary. And while he may have just flown here from Amsterdam a few nights before, his exhaustion does not take precedence over his calling \u2014 his mission \u2014 to spread his signature Afro-fusion music all over the world. \u201cIt has always been my vision to build a bridge between all Black people in all parts of the world through the music and performance,\u201d he states. \u201cMusic is the No. 1 messenger.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old artist, born Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu in Port Harcout, Nigeria, now splits his time between London and Lagos. And as his career gets more globe-spanning, the concept of his homeland seems to only become more and more important to him \u2014 and central to his identity as an artist. After pandemic delays, he has finally been touring the songs from his fifth album, Twice as Tall, released nearly two years ago on Atlantic Records\/Bad Habit\/Warner Music International and his own label, Spaceship Collective.<\/p>\n
It won the 2021 Grammy Award for best global music album, along with the praise of Nigeria\u2019s minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, who called the award \u201ca global endorsement for the Afrobeat genre of music that has propelled Nigeria\u2019s increasing dominance of the music world.\u201d And Burna is adamant that his signature \u201cAfro-fusion\u201d sound \u2014 a blend of Afrobeats folklore, dancehall riddims, hip-hop swagger, reggae and R&B, all sung in his distinct baritone mix of Yoruba, English and pidgin \u2014 is leading the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s making people who don\u2019t even speak the same language start dancing with each other,\u201d Burna says. Even in his more vulnerable lyrical moments, \u201cyou\u2019re dancing to it,\u201d he explains with a hearty laugh. \u201cAt that point, it becomes bigger than me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the last couple of years, Afrobeats has steadily migrated West thanks to crossover hits like Wizkid and Tems\u2019 Billboard Hot 100 top 10 \u201cEssence\u201d and CKay\u2019s \u201cLove Nwantiti (ah ah ah),\u201d which became the first-ever No. 1 on Billboard\u2019s new U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart in April. As the genre\u2019s profile has risen abroad, more Afrobeats artists have, post-lockdown, embarked on their first U.S. tours, and among that group, Burna has played the biggest stages yet \u2014 the kind that can mint superstars. With historic sold-out shows at London\u2019s Wembley Arena and Paris\u2019 Accor Arena already accomplished, he became the first African artist to headline Los Angeles\u2019 Hollywood Bowl in October 2021. Then in April, he became the first Nigerian act to headline and sell out New York\u2019s Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a fantastic performer. Even though I\u2019ve watched Burna more than 100 times onstage, I still get excited,\u201d says Osita \u201cDuke\u201d Ugeh, who, as CEO of promoter Duke Concept, has been booking U.S. tours for African acts like Burna for the last decade. (He secured Burna\u2019s first sold-out U.S. show in April 2019 at Harlem\u2019s Apollo Theater \u2014 where he again made history as the first Afrobeats artist to sell out the venue.)<\/p>\n
But as Ugeh knows well, Burna\u2019s arrival at the Garden was far from preordained. Since founding Duke Concept in 2013, he has struggled to get artists like him into big rooms. \u201c[Production managers and theaters] would be under the assumption that Afrobeats artists cannot sell this number of tickets. They didn\u2019t believe in the genre,\u201d Ugeh recalls. In 2019, even as he and Mr. Eazi made history as the first Afrobeats performers to play Coachella, Burna grumbled about the tiny printing of his name on the festival slate. \u201cl am an AFRICAN GIANT,\u201d he wrote on his Instagram story. \u201cI represent a whole Generation of SOLID AFRICAN creatives going Global.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe took the stairs,\u201d Bose says, quoting her son\u2019s description of the slow path he was forced to take in the live sector. \u201cWe didn\u2019t do any elevators. We spent a lot of time and money planning to go around the world. We ran through the label\u2019s tour support pretty quickly, so we were using money he\u2019s making from shows in other places, particularly in Africa, to bankroll our initial touring. Yes, it has been hard, but there is no way we\u2019re performing 16,000- to 20,000-capacity venues when we didn\u2019t start with 3,000.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Nigerian singer will speak at Billboard MusicCon on May 13 at AREA15 in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12963,"featured_media":8085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,31],"tags":[7,14,32],"class_list":{"0":"post-8088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"category-music","9":"tag-apie-project","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"yoast_head":"\n