Burna Boy Shows Signs of Slowing Down in The Run Up To No Sign Of Weakness

Burna Boy’s eighth studio album is finally on the horizon. In the past few weeks, the album’s rollout has ramped up significantly. He has made appearances on the covers of magazines and teased the album on social media through cheeky puns and aphorisms. He has appeared on shows, letting viewers in on certain nuances of the album. Recently, he released a lead single to his imminent album entitled Update. The record, a groovy fusion of Amapiano and traditional Afropop, samples Soul II Soul’s Back to Life, and represents his third single since 2023’s I Told Them. For all the excitement that the album’s rollout has garnered, however, the lead singles have struggled to inspire confidence in fans and Afrobeats enthusiasts alike. 

Update, the latest offering from the album, garnered a measly 246.8k streams on its first day on Spotify NG. Compare it with Wizkid’s Kese which earned 1.57m streams on its first day on Spotify NG, or his Piece of My Heart which scored a little above 1 million streams. Davido’s Funds, featuring Odumodublvck and Chike, similarly recorded 1.25m streams on its first day. Seyi Vibez Shaolin, which dropped a few days after Update, recorded around 700k streams on its first day on Spotify. At this juncture, one might want to invoke the epigram of art transcending quantifiable metrics, especially streaming numbers. This rebuttal, however, fails to acknowledge two facts. 

Pop music is as much a sport as it is an art form. The greatest pop stars are revered not just for their musical prowess but for their commercial feats. When we reminisce on the greatness of Micheal Jackson, sure, we bring up his unreal vocal range and the flawless penmanship on records like Billie Jean, Man in the Mirror, and Earth Song; but we also invoke feats of his preternatural stardom such as his storied Super Bowl Halftime Show in 1993, where an audience of thousands waited with bated breath as he stood still, frozen for over a minute, before launching into a nonstop medley composed of some of his greatest hits. We also invoke his incredible showing at the 1984 Grammys—where he carted off 8 awards including Album of the Year and Record of the Year—and his many Billboard records.

The second thing to consider is that the singles leading up to No Sign of Weakness—December’s Bundle by Bundle and the recently released Update—are heavily commercial—both in the themes they explore and the sonic atmosphere they inhabit. Every genre is judged against unique criteria and Pop songs, especially those that overtly tilt commercial, are beholden to their commercial showing. Even ignoring their underwhelming commercial performance, Update and Bundle by Bundle pale in comparison to the typical BurnaBoy song in terms of quality. 

Burna Boy’s strength has since forever been his astute penmanship. Consider 2022’s Last Last, which is his best-selling record by a distance. The Chopstix-produced beat shimmers like a room packed with chandeliers but it’s BurnaBoy’s heartfelt interrogation of heartbreak that gives the song its distinctive sheen. Update on the other hand feels like a middling freestyle. The P2J-produced beat is magnificently crafted, but almost every line BurnaBoy overlays it with seems to undermine its brilliance. He slathers the song with cliche lines such as “If I no get money na disability” and insipid ones such as “Gba update k’ole pa’owo.” Listening through, one begins to wonder what happened to the BurnaBoy who would populate songs with a surfeit of cleverly affecting lyrics.

In a recent interview with Zane Lowe for Apple Music, when asked about the inspiration for the album, Burna Boy replies “This project is different from all the others because there was no serious recording…” He then ventures into a hazy monologue about wanting to give interpretation to “what the waves and the ocean are saying.” If the first half of his response should be taken at face value, however, it would support the theory that having slayed most of his demons, he has for a while been struggling to stay inspired. Burna Boy’s discography can be bifurcated into two halves: those before 2023—set against the canvas of a form of adversity or obstacle—and those after that period—which have mostly seen him with any real antagonism. 

On his debut album Living an Impact for Eternity, as the title suggests, we see a wide-eyed Burna Boy singing and rapping, flitting seamlessly between genres in an attempt to prove his mettle, to emblazon his name on an Afropop landscape that was turning a new chapter. His sophomore album, though rough at the edges and lacking the finesse of his debut, finds him with a chip on his shoulder, aggrieved about being written off by pundits and critics after his messy split with his label. His other albums similarly find him as the underdog trying to hold his own against hectoring forces. The title of his fourth album, for example, was born from a perceived slight from Coachella. They had printed his name in a smaller size on the festival’s poster—which is standard practice for non-headlining artists. He, however, took it as a slight and issued a statement calling out their “disrespect” and proclaiming himself the African Giant. Since 2022, however, he appears to have slain all his demons and without the excitement of squaring off with his antagonists (both literal and figurative), he has increasingly looked uninspired. 

Perhaps to relive the thrill of battling enemies, he has started to manufacture new, embarrassing ones. His row with Speed Darlington is particularly illustrative. A few months ago, in the wake of Diddy’s arrest, Speed Darlington, who is famously a troll, started taking shots at Burna Boy, insinuating he was propositioned by Diddy in exchange for his Grammy award. Unseemly as the jokes were, you would think someone of Burna Boy’s stature would let it slide—celebrities get trolled every day—instead, he exacted a drawn-out revenge against Speed Darlington that started with social media banter and culminated in litigation. Another example that’s particularly telling is a snippet titled Empty Chairs, which he shared on social media. In the song he sings “My enemies are no longer on the streets or the roads, they’re now on the internet, on the blogs and at my sold at shows looking for empty chairs.” What he does here is unwittingly allude to a drop in the quality of his antagonists. 

Burna Boy’s predicament is hardly peculiar. Artists who thrive off of antagonism tend to feel enervated in periods of calm, often resorting to self-destructive behavior to create a false sense of opposition. Stop and consider the frenzied trajectory of Ye, formerly known as Kanye West. In his early days as a rapper, he often had to rail against fierce opposition—from detractors and unsavory situations. When he started rapping, many of his peers didn’t take him seriously, and sought to pigeonhole him into his role as a producer. After a strong campaign to turn the tide—he pitched his music to every label he could find; started producing less in protest; and managed to win Jay Z over to his cause—he suffered an accident that left his jaws shattered. Set against bleak odds owing to his accident and the general uncertainty about his artistry, he dropped The College Dropout, which went on to become a Hip Hop hall-of-famer. 

As he progressed in his career, this trend of having to surmount herculean challenges would intensify. Whether that meant negotiating with the pressure of delivering a worthy follow-up to a widely successful debut album or dealing with blowback from detractors on account of his unconventional approach towards HipHop (It may seem quaint now but when he started rapping, it was almost unheard of for a rapper to entirely discard gangsterism in favor of themes like mental health and college romance). But as the number of his antagonists began to steeply decline later in his career, he would tumble down a slippery slope as he sought to manufacture new enemies, self-imploding in the process. It started with him antagonizing Taylor Swift, progressed to flippant if incendiary remarks like “Slavery was a choice,” and has now culminated in his full embrace of Nazism.

After a long period of being pelted by upheavals and strife, of being underrated and antagonized, of having to start afresh after an episode of self-inflicted trouble. Burna Boy finds himself wreathed in tranquility. He still has detractors—as does every other public figure—but he’s overwhelmingly loved despite his predilection for stirring trouble. He’s regarded as the face of Afrobeats and has earned countless awards and certifications. He performs at global venues at a frequency that’s unprecedented by an Afrobeats act. For any other artist, this would be the ideal if perfect situation. But for an artist like BurnaBoy who creates his best work when his back is against a wall, this presents a creative dilemma. With his album release inching closer as the days go by, the story of his No Sign of Weakness era is still being written.  As for how this story will eventually pan out, only time will tell.