Damini Ogulu, professionally known as Burna Boy creates ferociously vibrant music with a deep soulfulness. The clear bops of the Nigerian native seem like swagged-out libations to the ancestors; his tunes transmit a dutiful sense of history that melds with the laid-back day-party atmosphere. Burna Boy’s unique fusion of afrobeats, dancehall, and hip-hop feels earthy, alive, and inherently spiritual; each track (about love, lust, and stunting on haters) is somehow strengthening—like an auditory amulet. This is true even though the content of his songs is in many ways similar to that of other artists on the Afro-fusion scene.
Burna’s trademark style helps the Afrobeats album penetrate the soul, but the insights go deeper. While transitioning into the next stage of his life, Burna struggles with his desires, sins, victories, and riches. And it begins with an African hymn, just like most good things in life. The magnificent voices of the South African choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo shout “This is my narrative” again on the opening tune, “Glory,” before transitioning into the very European Happy Birthday song, which the majority of us know by heart.
“Love, Damini,” Burna Boy’s sixth studio album, contains 19 complete songs, which is a wealth of content. He enlisted a diverse group of musicians from around the world, including the massive hitmakers J Balvin and Ed Sheeran, Khalid, Kehlani, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Popcaan from Jamaica, and British rapper J Hus. Burna Boy’s new album, which follows up on the Grammy-winning 2020 “Twice as Tall,” simultaneously celebrates his successes and opens up about the uncertainties and disappointments that come with being an overachiever.
Afrofusion is what Burna Boy labels his music. The hand-played and electronic percussion of Nigerian Afrobeats, which combines hits and silences to suggest three-against-two syncopations, is its basis. Burna Boy links Afrobeats to its international relatives, including R&B, Jamaican dancehall, reggaeton, Congolese rumba, hip-hop, and more. This is made possible by some of Africa’s most creative producers. While his melodies don’t first seem to have a sharp edge, he puts each note to create still another layer of polyrhythm, and his silky baritone voice has a sophisticated serenity that can hint at easy certainty or a mournful reluctance.
Every cleverly placed element adds to the music’s enjoyment, such as the weave of sampled and reverberating backup vocals in “Different Size,” the percussion-based breaks in “Kilometre” and refrain, the reversed guitar tones and distant reggae horns in “Jagele,” and the saxophone curlicues that respond to his voice in “Common Person.” The exteriors are sleek and comforting, while the interiors are subtly amusing. However, Burna Boy mopes more than he does happy.
Burna Boy sings “This is my story” in the album’s first track, “Glory,” which starts with the somber Ladysmith Black Mambazo harmonies until piano chords enter and Burna Boy confesses that he’s been “having nightmares of the day I fall off.”
His visitors frequently join him in his pursuits. Burna Boy cautions listeners to remember Martin Luther King had a dream, and then he was shot as Khalid sings in the hymn-like “Wild Dreams,” which Burna Boy wrote. In “Rollercoaster,” a bilingual Afrobeats-dembow mashup featuring J Balvin trading rhymes with him, Burna Boy expresses thankfulness, gives up “the fast life” to be “pure of heart,” and accepts ups and downs in life. Additionally, he sings “Whenever I’m broken, you make me feel complete” in Ed Sheeran’s song “For My Hand,” a vow of shared fidelity through difficult times that sounds like it belongs in a wedding song.
In “Last Last,” the album’s most agitated song, a work-life imbalance destroys a romance. Burna Boy sings, “I put my life into my job/And I know I’m in trouble,” over nervously strung minor chords and a vocal phrase sampled from Toni Braxton’s “He Wasn’t Man Enough.” The production puts the upbeat track at a distance, and soon Burna Boy is apologizing — “Don’t know how to show you my love” — and feeling numb and compulsive: “No matter what I do, it’s not enough.” In “It’s Plenty,” he sings, “Don’t want to squander my days/I want to spend them on happiness.” He is more convincing in “How Bad Could It Be” while describing melancholy, isolation, and anxiety because of the crystalline guitar plucking and ethereal female voices in the background.
He is also concerned about Burna Boy’s current residence and the smog in Lagos, the metropolis of Nigeria. In the midtempo song “Whiskey,” he sings, “Because of oil and gas, my city’s so dark/Pollution make the air turn black.” The song also features stealth guitar riffs and sounds of an old-school horn section. Even when he makes sexually suggestive statements, like in “Dirty Secrets,” “Science,” and “Toni-Ann Singh,” they are accompanied with menacing undertones and minor chords.
Burna Boy could have easily celebrated himself and paraded around fresh conquests on “Love, Damini” instead of focusing on himself. However, he still doesn’t feel confident enough to party right now.
Album Rating: 8/10
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