Burna Boy's recent comments seem to have rubbed people the wrong way. During a recent interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, the Nigerian-bred singer shared his thoughts about the lack of substance involved in Afrobeats. Burna Boy claims that many of the artists lack real "life experience." In his opinion, the genre has become about "nothing" “Half of them … 90% of them, have almost no real-life experiences that they can understand."
Burna Boy also noted that music doesn't have realistic depictions about the pitfalls of life. “That’s why you hear most Nigerian music, African Music, or Afrobeats, as people call it, is mostly about nothing, literally nothing. There is no substance to it, like nobody is talking about anything. It’s just a great time, an amazing time. But at the end of the day, life isn’t an amazing time,” he told Lowe.
Burna Boy Has Faced Major Backlash Over His Comments
After clips of the interview made its rounds on social media, many people blasted the artist for his statements. "This is ignorance at its peak! A great time is not 'nothing'. It is something. Something tangible. Afrobeats has lifted a lot of people out of depression. During #EndSARS protested using Davido's FEM as our anthem. @burnaboy should stop capping rubbish just because he wants to sell his album," one person wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter). Whereas another user said: "Overall, he could have passed his message without making the genre look bad. I’m a big time Burna Boy fan by the way, but the truth has to be said."
Another person commented: "Man just lose it saying this.. disrespecting people work! This is odd bruv." However, some offered a different perspective, and believed Burna Boy might have had a point. "He actually said Most of “Afrobreats” and in this context I’m sure he’s referring to Albums. When you listen to most of these “Afrobeats” albums, it’s just a collection of maybe hit songs and even some you don’t get the album feeling to it at all. That doesn’t even mean we don’t have good Afrobeats stuff out there," someone wrote.
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