Burna Boy is facing heated criticism after some recent comments he made about afrobeats.
The singer spoke with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe and shared his belief regarding the genre’s lack of substance.
The Love, Damini star expressed, “90% of them, have almost no real-life experiences that they can understand, which is why 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.”
Burna continued, “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.”
Fans and critics didn’t take his comments lightly. One tweeted, “If this guy wants to call out other artists he should do it and stop ridiculing the genre.”
Another commented, “Someone said he’s burning the ladder he climbed up, so he’s the only one at the top. And they’re right, this ain’t it.”
Someone else chimed in stating that Burna only spoke out like this in an effort to “please the western media and [look] for controversy to push his album,” adding that “Davido and Wizkid will never trash talk like this.”
He has yet to respond to the backlash, but was caught up in a separate controversy back in March for his comments on Africans vs. African-Americans.
Watch Burna Boy’s full chat with Lowe below, where he speaks on his new album, I Told Them: