Exactly how tall is Burna Boy’s Twice As Tall?

15 sep 2020 - 11:15

Because Burna Boy currently stands as lord commander of pop from these parts, his albums are exhibits of how far our music has come, and how it fares against sounds from the other side.

Burna Boy.

About a month ago, the singer’s latest album Twice As Tall tided ashore. It was attended by an animated video titled The Secret Flame. As expected, the album was met with the pomp and gusto befitting of the man’s stature. Early reviews have poured with glamorous phrases pronouncing it a masterpiece. It has also performed exceptionally well on local and international charts, further proving his pop penetration. But exactly how good is the 15-tracker compared to his previous work, African Giant. More importantly, where does it fall in the wider pop conversation?

The album – whose collaborators include everyone from Youssou N’Dour to Timbaland, Anderson .Paak, Mike Dean and Coldplay’s Chris Martin – is perhaps appropriately listed as ‘worldwide’ on Apple Music. If Burna Boy’s portfolio is anything to go by, it shows that no single genre is sufficient to contain his sound – not even the label Afrobeats with its immensely broad connotation. As one who freely sprinkles his Africanness on everything he works on, Burna Boy has succeeded in dispatching a versatile catalogue that listeners of diverse origins can enjoy, without the singer being accused of appropriation. So, a description consisting of the words “global” or “world” will do.

Set in the Afro-fusion ethos that Burna Boy preaches, Twice As Tall is presented as a cultural bridge between his motherland and the rest of the world. The album's executive producer, Sean ‘Diddy' Combs, said as much in a letter to Africa posted on Twitter: “You have been heavy on my mind and my heart. I’ve been trying to connect to the motherland for a minute, but I never got a chance to do it properly. When I say properly, I mean in a soulful spiritual way ... I think it’s so important we all make it our mission to build a bridge to the motherland.”

Indeed, the album’s mission does not deviate from its Grammy-nominated predecessor. If anything, it aims to amplify it. The titles of Burna Boy’s last two albums do not merely suggest a continuum; multiple songs on Twice As Tall mirror those on African Giant – a rousing speech by his mother appears here, too, as do anecdotes criticising the scramble for Africa, and the lining of the album’s ambience with the transcendent horn placements that call up Fela.

These days, Afrobeats encompasses virtually all popular sounds from the continent. With his self-styled Afro-fusion, Burna Boy has given himself permission to touch anything without seeming out of pace. “I move with the spirit, and when it takes me,” he told Apple Music. “It’s not too calculated for me when I take my steps, but when I move I’ll know if it’s right.”

What’s more, he has mastered the formula for an effective song. This is why one can neither point to a bad song on the LP nor criticise the authenticity of his sonic range. On the song he shares with a Chris Martin, the protest anthem ‘Monsters You Made’, and ‘Naughty By Nature’, which features the American hip hop trio it's named after, Burna Boy passes the chemistry test with ease.

Again, Twice As Tall is trimmed down to the right quantity. This applies to collabos too. After several listens, one gets the sense that the best songs were either done with Africans ('Level Up' featuring Youssou N’Dour and ‘Time Flies’ alongside Kenyans Sauti Sol) or by Burna Boy himself (‘Onyeka’, ‘23’, ‘Way Too Big’ and ‘Wettin Dey Sup’).

However, as the album is not replete with as many dancefloor triggers as African Giant, it subtracts from the overall pop spice required to thrive in a climate that panders more to club rhythm than much else. ‘Comma' is Burna Boy’s closest attempt at an African club hit. His previous singles, including ‘Killing Dem' featuring Zlatan, ‘Deja Vu' and ‘Rock Your Body’, and a number of African Giant tracks prove that he has done better dance records. In fact, one could argue that aside from its clever global marketing strategies, the fact that Burna Boy’s previous album floated largely on dance is the reason it was a continental success and consequently became loved by the rest of the world, which in recent years has developed a healthy appetite for African dance rhythms.

Granted, it is possible to compose Afrobeats in a slower groove. Mr Eazi and Juls have demonstrated this in recent years. But the genre will always circle back to beats that inspire frantic legwork. And so, If Twice As Tall is deprived of this crucial element, exactly how tall is it? After all, in the words of Pat Boon, whose voice opens the album, Burna Boy would “have to be twice as tall at least to feel better than I do.”

Commercially, now that a Grammy nomination accompanies his name, Burna Boy has unlocked more doors to fame and fortune. With that has come the delicate task of catering to a global listenership without shedding identity – a real test of the philosophy of the Afro-fusion label.

Does Twice As Tall boast of more height than the record it draws comparison to? The answer is, probably not. African Giant is still Burna Boy’s magnum opus. It may not have won the Grammy, but it remains his best foot forward.