The close of July saw Burna Boy feature ‘My Oasis’, a song by Sam Smith as we reported here. Meanwhile his 2020 singles: ‘Odogwu’, and ‘Wonderful’ continue to perform so well in the Top Official Afrobeats Chart, in the UK, it looks like Burna is not about to stop. 🌚
Nigerian superstar Burna Boy returns today with the release of his new album, Twice As Tall. The 15-track project serves as a follow-up to last year’s African Giant, which was nominated for Best World Music Album at the 62nd Grammy Awards. Burna Boy’s ‘Twice As Tall’ The album includes appearances by rap vets Naughty By Nature, as well as Coldplay’s front man Chris Martin, Senegalese singer Youssou N’Dour, Kenyan band Sauti Sol, and Stormzy. It was executively produced by Burna Boy, his mother Bosede Ogulu, and Sean “Diddy”. It also includes production credits from Timbaland, Mike Dean, and Anderson Paak. The album was preceded by the single “Wonderful.”
The project, which Diddy has called the “album of the year,” was mostly recorded in Lagos during the lockdown as a result of the pandemic. Eleven of the 15 tracks were produced by Nigerian producers, 8 of which are from the Spaceship Collective.
“Twice As Tall is the album about a period of time in my life,” said Burna Boy. “It’s the album about the struggle for freedom. It’s the album about life in general, real life, good times, bad times, happy times, sad times, great times.”
“[The album is] basically continuing the mission I started, which is building a bridge that leads every Black person in the world to come together, and to make you understand that without you having a home base, you can’t be as strong as you are,” Burna Boy shared in a recent interview. “We’re not what they teach in schools out here…They don’t teach the right history, the history of strength and power that we originally had and that they should be teaching now. They don’t really teach the truth about how we ended up in the situation we’re in. They don’t teach the truth about what’s going on now and how to overcome it.”
The album is described as “a beautiful mélange of sounds… a pure, unapologetic African body of work [that] boasts of a global contemporary sound that is for everyone.”
The hotly anticipated set sees the Afrobeats titan make a bold play to bring his flavorsome sound to a global audience like never before; – a colourful collection of sounds. Below is the track list:
The most outstanding and breathtaking stand-out track on the entire album is ‘Monsters You Made’ and it reverberates with eloquent fury against systems of oppression. Although it was written in January, the song feels powerfully resonant with the reckoning with the racist legacies of historical figures and institutions. The song ends with a sample from a 1987 interview with the Ghanaian poet Ama Ata Aidoo.
‘Twice As Tall’ may seem as a dark and stormy political record – however, it is quite the opposite. On the album, Burna swerves from introspective songs about lost friendship (on track 09. ‘No Fit Vex’) to the guaranteed-to-make-you-miss-dancefloors banger ‘Way Too Big’, which Burna grinningly describes as “just an outright flex”.
Along with the album, Burna Boy has earlier announced (on social) the release of an official animated comic book to accompany the album. He revealed that the comic book was supposed to help put the message of the album in perceptive.
“The Secret Flame.” Comic is a narration by Burna Boy’s grandfather Benson Idonije (who managed iconic Afrobeat music pioneer Fela Kuti back in the day). The animated visual follows Burna Boy through a spiritual journey of discovering oneself. Watch Burna’s “The Secret Flame” animated comic below:
The singer-songwriter announced the official availability of his fifth album “Twice As Tall” on social, writing:
Barely an hour of the release, Twice as Tall had already surpassed 5Million streams on Audiomack.
There had been speculations about Burna going on a music hiatus/ break after this album’s release, after he posted on his snap:
Whereas some say think this was a pre-album release stunt, Burna Boy is expected to perform on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show tonight.
The revolutionary ‘Twice As Tall’ the album was released under Spaceship Entertainment Ltd/ Atlantic Records and is of a 53minute playtime listen. It is out now and can be streamed here. 🦍🚀🛸
