Ademola Olonilua

Nigerian Grammy award-winning singer, Damini Ogulu, a.k.a Burna Boy, has shown he is truly twice as tall with his outing at the 63rd Grammy Awards where he bagged the prize for Best Global Music album.

The singer was nominated two consecutive times, and that was simply because he chose to evolve.

From ‘Like To Party’, the singer became the ‘African Giant’ and further evolved to be ‘Twice As Tall’, which enabled him to attain the feat last night.

Not only did he go home with the prestigious Grammy Award, thanks to his Twice As Tall album, he also gave a stellar performance at the awards ceremony.

Dubbed the African Giant, the singer came into public glare in 2012 when he released the song, Like To Party. Soon, as the song hit the airwaves, it became a favourite among the youths.

This song was wavy and easy to sing. Burna Boy came with that cool kid swag; at the time, he had not grown dreads. He wore silky shirts (mostly Versace) and a specific kind of Cobain glasses, which was his signature look.

Before he hit the limelight, Burna Boy returned to Nigeria from the UK in 2011, and in that year, the singer had his first major record deal with Aristokrat Records.

Hungry for success, he released his first project under the record label — an EP he titled ‘Burn Notice’. Towards the end of 2011, he came out with another project ― Burn Identity.

At the time, the action Hollywood Bourne Film series starring Matt Damon was popular, with his stage name being Burna Boy as well. One can thus deduce the reason behind the title of his early works.

In August 2013, the singer released his debut studio album titled L.I.F.E, which is an acronym for Leaving an Impact for Eternity; and the album did leave an impact for revellers.

With hit songs like ‘Like to Party,’ ‘Tonight,’ ‘Always Love You,’ ‘Run My Race’ and ‘Yawa Dey,’ Burna Boy experimented with various sounds and made a lovely album, which earned him a spot as one of the artistes to watch out for. The album’s music had heavy inspiration from the music of Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade and Bob Marley.

According to Wikipedia, L.I.F.E sold 40,000 copies on the first day of its release. Aristokrat Records later sold the album’s marketing rights to Uba Pacific for N10m.

Produced entirely by Leriq, L.I.F.E featured guest appearances from 2face Idibia, M.I, Timaya, Olamide, Reminisce and Wizkid. The album later peaked at number seven on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart in August 2013.

By 2015, the singer had launched his record label ― Spaceship Entertainment ― after two years with Aristokrat Records.

The Wonderful singer went on to release two albums ― ‘Redemption’ in 2015 and ‘Outside’ in 2018.

The 2018 album, Outside, was a commercial success, with hit songs like Ye, Outside and Heaven’s Gate. Coincidentally, that same year, Kanye West released an album titled Ye, which made Burna Boy’s song more popular.

Many concluded that 2018 was the ‘Ye of Burna’; little did they know he still had a lot in store.

Speaking in several interviews about the monster hit, Ye, Burna Boy gave credit to club owner and politician, Shina Peller, who he hailed in the song, saying, “Shina Peller, that’s my bro, my family.”

He noted that he was out celebrating at Quilox one night when Shina Peller came in and literally dragged him into the studio.

Although intoxicated, Burna Boy said he obliged and followed Peller into a studio where a beat produced by Phantom was played for him. In that state, he recorded the song and it became the international hit, Ye.

At this point, Burna Boy was already self-aware of his brand image and the direction of his career. Thus, when he saw the announcement that he was set to perform at Coachella alongside fellow Nigerian star, Mr Eazi, but realised that his name was spelt in small fonts, he took to his Twitter account to call out organisers of the prestigious event.

He demanded that the fonts be increased, as he is an “African Giant,” hence the name of his next project which fetched him his first Grammy nomination.

Initially, when he called himself African Giant, Twitter users mocked him; but when the album dropped in mid-2019, many agreed that he had, indeed, become a giant of Africa.

His African Giant album was undeniably smashing hot and it shot the singer to the top three biggest entertainers in Nigeria.

In December 2019, Obama named Burna Boy’s song, Anybody, from the African Giant album, as one of his favourite songs.

The album had smashing hit songs like Anybody, Dangote, Wetin Man Go Do, Gbona, On the Low, with Killin Dem featuring Zlatan, which is one of his biggest street songs to date.

So massive was the success of the album that he went on the African Giant tour with most of his shows being sold out.

African Giant won Album of the Year at the 2019 All Africa Music Awards and was nominated for Best World Music Album at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards and an MTV EMA.

Burna Boy, however, lost the Grammy award to Angelique Kidjo’s Celia. He later teamed up with America billionaire music mogul, Sean Diddy Combs, to create the Twice As Tall album.

The album was made at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic where the lockdown restriction was severe. This made Burna Boy and Diddy share ideas via video calls.

In one of the video calls posted by the singer, Diddy assured him that he was producing the Twice As Tall album to win the Album of the Year and not just Best Global Album.

Although it is often said that the third time is a charm, Burna Boy proved that he is an exception to the rule as he bagged the award after a second try.