By Ayo Onikoyi

In the follow up to the release of his new album “I Told them” his seventh studio album, Burna Boy opens up to  Zane Lowe of Apple Music in New York  about the making of the album and the journey that led him to the global success he’s experiencing now.  He also shares his opinion of Afrobeats, in terms of substance and content.

He said. “You hear most of Nigerian music, or I’ll say African… I don’t even know what to say, Afrobeats, as people call it, it’s mostly about nothing, literally nothing. There’s no substance to it. Nobody’s talking about anything. It’s just a great time, it’s an amazing time. But at the end of the day, life is not an amazing time. No matter how nice of a time you’re having now or you had at some point or you plan to have, you’re still going to face life. So it’s like, for me, I feel like music should be that, music should be the essence of the artist, you understand? The artist is a person, like me speaking for myself, the artist is a person who has good days, bad days, great days, and worst days. And for me, if I give you something like this with my face on it, and my name, then I should be giving you that experience. That should be a window for you to see some of that essence.”

He said his new album is different from others he had dropped in the past because it is a true reflection of him and what he had always wanted to do.

“It shows me exactly the way I wanted to express what I was feeling and what my unit was feeling. The spirit of my unit. Just put that in because this is every day. This is a side where people don’t really get to see because I don’t really care for anyone to see. I have fun with it like this. But I felt like this time, this is the way… How do I put it? A more understandable way to pass that feeling and that energy across. And at the same time, showing you that’s… Not you. Showing everyone, really, that the combination of worlds is something that we haven’t really capitalized on. Because at the end of the day, once we’re all unified, everything else, the fruits of that just take care of everything,” he explained.

On the title of the album, he said, “They say a lot of times that prophets are not really recognized in their  own homes. So this one is for the part of my own home and the people in my own home who didn’t believe or doubt it, or still doubt, or any type of thing. And not just them, it’s like everyone that ever heard me speak in the past or when I’d first started. You can go back to my old tweets and stuff. I basically predicted everything that’s happening now. So this is basically that. It’s fun to tell people something is true, and they doubt, and then they end up seeing it. There’s no greater feeling.

Burna Boy  didn’t deny that he loves to be given credit for his works, adding that he likes it better when it comes from the right places and People.

“I’m not going to say I don’t want credit because everyone wants credit for what they do. For me,  it’s more like I want credit from places where it actually matters. Even though in reality it  doesn’t mean nothing but places where you can say why, you can explain and it makes sense to everybody. That’s the type of thing I want. I want to go somewhere where it’s like they see the work and they see everything, the journey and everything, and they’re like, “This is amazing. Yeah, congratulations. That’s the type of thing that means something. You don’t get that in my country. It means something to the people who are not part of the game in a way. It means something to people who have nothing to gain or lose and no stakes in the matter, ” he said.

Burna Boy also speaks on his accomplishments, admitting that he is proud of it.

“That’s the thing I’ve beaten my chest the most about,” he said. ” It’s the fact that, not only did I do it on my own terms and all that, I did it against all odds. You know what I mean? And against the wishes of the powers that be in my environment. You know what I mean? So yeah, it’s something I’m really proud of.”

On Fela Kuti : “I am grateful for the fact that he existed in his time so that we could get and experience the true organic nature of what he was and the essence of what he stood for and the message he passed across to us.

On his first Impression of New York City

“To me, it looked just like Lagos, only with more tall buildings closer together. The same energy as Lagos. It’s the same… Everybody’s in a hurry. I felt like, “Wow. This can’t be what they’ve been showing me on TV.” This doesn’t look like TV land… this place is very sentimental for me because starting from PlayStation theater all the way to Citi Field now. It’s been a journey.