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Burna Boy: African Giant review – Caribbean swagger and Fela swing

(Atlantic)

In the past few years, Afro-fusion singer Burna Boy has gone from Nigerian superstar to international sensation. Rather than chasing the crossover, he’s waited for the zeitgeist to come to him. Around the same time he briefly featured on Drake’s seminal More Life mixtape of 2017, Damini Ogulu started cropping up on UK grime tracks (and vice versa). He played Coachella last April; now he’s on a Beyoncé Lion King tune.

Burna Boy’s fourth album lands in this powerful spotlight, continuing the singer’s boundary-hopping mixture of laid-back Caribbean swagger, Fela Kuti swing and multilingual communiques on a range of concerns. Recent single Dangote is a typically resonant swirl. Its title nods at Africa’s richest man while the lyrics mull the need for ordinary people to hustle; it’s all wrapped up in Auto-Tune warble, Fela-jazz horns and African-inflected dancehall. Of the handful of co-signs, Jorja Smith adds honey to Gum Body, her yearning underscored by low-key brass.

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