Burna Boy Struggles To Rise To The Occasion With “Twice As Tall” Burna Boy has always been self-aware.

 

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Jerry Chiemeke

Jerry Chiemeke

Aug 20 · 6 min read

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Burna Boy Struggles To Rise To The Occasion With “Twice As Tall”

Burna Boy has always been self-aware.

In the first verse of “Tonight” (one of his earliest singles released in 2012), he affirms his alpha-maleness, singing along the lines of “see, I dey see your woman, and I dey hold my woman, and I be real magician, I fit to get your woman”.

This machismo, this cockiness, this self-assuredness has been a mainstay in Burna Boy’s music career, within and away from the studio. It is why he walked out of the arena when he lost out at the Headies in 2013, it is what has made him an enigma of sorts, and it is the reason he attracts divided opinion in the Nigerian music-consuming community. Detractors are quick to point out his “arrogance”, but the quality of his craft has spoken even louder for him over the years.

Barely a year after the release of African Giant – which was a critical cum commercial success, and which earned the Port Harcourt-born star a Grammy nomination – Burna Boy put out another album, Twice As Tall, made available with much fanfare to the public on August 14. On this new project, he enlists the help of his mother Bose Ogulu and American media mogul P. Diddy as executive producers. He also reaches out to longtime collaborator Leriq and the sound-weaving Rexxi