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Getty Images<\/p>\nRiyah Collins<\/p>\n
BBC Newsbeat<\/p>\n
Getty Images<\/p>\n
Burna Boy performed at Wireless Festival on Sunday, just after releasing his eighth studio album <\/p>\n
Burna Boy has apologised for comments he made distancing himself from Afrobeats.<\/p>\n
The Nigerian singer-songwriter is seen as a trailblazer who has helped to bring the genre to a global audience.<\/p>\n
But he faced backlash over a 2023 Apple Music interview where he said it “lacks substance” and most artists in the space had “almost no real-life experiences”.<\/p>\n
Speaking to 1Xtra’s Eddie Kadi, Burna says the reaction to his comments made him realise why it was important to have an umbrella term to advance the Afrobeats movement.<\/p>\n
Burna, real name Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, made history in 2023<\/a> when he became the first African artist to headline a stadium show in the UK.<\/p>\n By that point, he already had a Grammy under his belt and was known for dominating the Official UK Afrobeats chart.<\/p>\n But, he says, at the time he didn’t want his music, which he sees as a “mix of elements” to be defined by a single genre.<\/p>\n “I didn’t understand why people wanted my music to be inside one box,” he says.<\/p>\n “The way I saw it, if you just put everything into Afrobeats, you’re now comparing Socrates to Kendrick Lamar because they both said two things that rhyme so they both must be rappers.”<\/p>\n Burna says he was “in a dark place mentally” when he made the comments. <\/p>\n “I wasn’t the happiest man in the world,” he says.<\/p>\n Burna Boy is one of the world’s most successful Afrobeats artists <\/p>\n He says the “division” his words caused helped him to “come to terms” with his opinion.<\/p>\n “I got the point of the Afrobeats tag in that moment,” he says.<\/p>\n “I totally get it and I apologise for that confusion.”<\/p>\n He says he’s now content to wear the label, which he leans into on his new album, No Sign of Weakness, released last week.<\/p>\n “I learnt to embrace the fact that I will always be different,” he says. <\/p>\n “I’m not going to be the favourite but I’m going to be the best.”<\/p>\n Burna Boy, who has almost 24m monthly listeners on Spotify, performed at Wireless Festival on Sunday<\/a>.<\/p>\n He says performing live is his main passion.<\/p>\n “I want to be able to do this until I die,” he says. <\/p>\n “I want to be doing this the way someone like Coldplay has been doing it for a long time, or The Rolling Stones,” he says. <\/p>\n “These people are still doing what I’m doing now, so why don’t I see anyone that looks like me, on those levels, at that age? <\/p>\n “And it’s simple, it might sound crazy, it’s because they just don’t love it as much as I do.”<\/p>\n He suspected – rightly – that his idol, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, might understand.<\/p>\n So he asked him to feature on his new track, Empty Chairs.<\/p>\n “Mick Jagger is the rock star,” he says.<\/p>\n “I felt he, out of everyone in the world, would understand where I was coming from with this song lyrically and he did.”<\/p>\n Working with the 81-year-old rocker was “one of the best experiences I’ve had,” says Burna. <\/p>\n The singer’s just started his European and North American tour, which is due to wrap up at the end of the year. <\/p>\n aListen to Newsbeat live<\/a> at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays – or listen back here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Riyah Collins BBC Newsbeat Getty Images Burna Boy performed at Wireless Festival on Sunday, just after releasing his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":["post-11731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Getty](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/902a4d30-60d4-11f0-b428-cb3de5783b16.jpg.webp.webp\")
Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/74a706f0-15d7-11ef-9b12-1ba8f95c4917.jpg.webp.webp\")
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