Burna Boy found himself in hot water a few weeks back for saying Black Americans "lack culture" during an interview. “Why do you think Chinese Americans have their respect?" he questioned. "They don’t go through the things that African Americans go through.” Burna Boy added, “You know why? Because the Chinese American has a base. He actually knows where he’s from in China. Italian Americans know where their grandparents came from in Italy… Same goes for everyone else except African-Americans.”
Almost immediately, he received criticism for his remarks. Recently, he had a sit-down with Complex to provide some clarity. The Nigerian singer says that his words got misinterpreted. He also claims he ignores the negative attention because "people have their own agendas."
Burna Boy Says He Wants To Bring People Together
“My mission is to bring us together. My mission is to build a bridge that can’t be broken, a bridge that should’ve always been there,” he says. “So for me, that’s not really relevant. I don’t really look at none of that because I feel like when people say that they have their own agendas.” He also reflected on his comments about Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan: “There’s nothing I said that Malcolm X didn’t say. There’s nothing I said that The Honorable Louis Farrakhan didn’t say. But, obviously, it’s Burna Boy saying it and he’s from Africa… All that’s beneath me. My mission and my movements [are] too divine for stupid sh*t like that.”
It seems that Burna Boy can't escape drama these days. The singer/ songwriter is also facing backlash for his statements on Afrobeats. Burna Boy claims that many of the artists lack real “life experience.” In his opinion, the genre has become about “nothing.” 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," he told Apple Music's Zane Lowe.
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