By Adewojumi Aderemi LERIQ, TELZ, SKREAD & REXXIE TALK ‘TWICE AS TALL’

 

The production on ‘Twice As Tall’ is the very first commendation listeners have to give Billboard 200’s spot 54, as Pat Boone’s rendition of the Journey To The Centre Of The Earth soundtrack number, “Twice As Tall” is honoured to introduce what will instantaneously become Burna Boy’s most successful body of work. Convoking a slew of talented producers, from hip-hop legends Timbaland and Mike Dean to local hero Rexxie, Burna Boy pays close attention to the beatsmiths who are to provide the instrumental grooves that will accompany his versatile performance through the project. The opening of the album makes that clear, before anything else.

Just as Boone is reaching into his chest to pull out the spritely pre-hook of “Twice As Tall”, the 1959 classic moodily bleeds into the futurist production that underscores Burna Boy’s retrospective meditations on the times were he “Couldn’t Level Up”. Produced by a village, “Level Up (Twice As Tall)” is a sonically sprawling track, with its theatre-school introduction complemented by electronic musings that morph into drawn out chords and soft keys as Youssou N’Dour delivers his uplifting hook, before returning to Boone’s rhyme, reverberated underneath a deep bass heartbeat.

This is the point at which Burna Boy discusses his infamous Grammy L. Though only two minutes of the album have played, by this point, Burna Boy is already reminding us of that disheartening robbery which unified the country and our growing allies all over the world.