Last year was by far Burna Boy’s year and everything he did was just right and well calculated and by having a calculated move, he conquered the world musical stage and made history while at it setting precedence to many African artistes and becoming an idol in the process for the up and coming artistes across Africa, not only in Nigeria since Burna Boy is now an international act artiste, not just a Nigerian and/or African artiste.
His highly anticipated and well-performing album of his lucrative career, ‘African Giant’ saw him become the literal musical African Giant with pretty much all of the records on that album which even the previous American president, Barack Obama loved.
Burna Boy was nominated for the very first time at the 62nd Grammy Awards but lost to Angelie Kidjo but last year he won his fair share of accolades that can’t be overlooked.
Burna Boy is among the top African artistes today, he is at the same level or maybe he’s at a higher level than the current musical forces in the African music industry.
Burna Boy who is now dating Stefflon Don has surpassed his own plateau of dominating the African music scene, he is not dominating the international music scene and in 2019 he worked with internationally acclaimed artistes like Ed Sheeran, Mahalia, Jorja Smith, Jeremih, Serani, Dave, Stormzy, of course expanding his international brand even further in the process.
The Nigerian superstar might have lost a win at his first-ever nominations at the Grammys but what’s for sure is that he will someday bag close to ten Grammys at once and maybe become one of the African musicians to have a lot of Grammy Awards in history because his work ethic is out of this world, plus he has a niche of putting out great, timeless music and he has the spirit of Fela Kuti inside him, who can stop him now.
Burna Boy holding the plaque that he was presented for selling out SSE Wembley Arena in London during his African Giant Tour. Source: @burnaboygram/Instagram
Taking to social media a couple of days back, Burna Boy shared with his fans his accomplishments of 2019, and clearly it’s amazing, to say the least, he owned 2019 and you’d understand why he deserved the Grammy Award win(not throwing shade at the legendary Angelique Kidjo or anything) after seeing what he accomplished as a solo act with his mother as his manager.
After Burna Boy released his ‘African Giant’ album, the wheels of his international dominance started running and he has numbers to back that up.
Burna Boy’s 2019 accolades
Currently, Burna Boy is the most streamed African artiste in Spotify with over 13 million listeners monthly. Burna Boy recorded over 600 million music streams in 2019 alone, talk of numbers!
In 2019, Burna Boy’s ‘African Giant’ was the number 1 most-streamed album in Africa.
Burna Boy released over 10 music videos.
Burna Boy had 70 shows across America and Europe with 50 out of the 70 being sold out making him one of the best performing and successful African artiste today.
The Nigerian artistes who have biological links with the legendary Fela Kuti won the ‘Best Africa Act’ at the 2019 MTV Europe Music Awards & ‘Best International Act’ at the BET Awards in 2019.
He won the ‘African Artiste of the Year’ at the Soundcity MVP Awards, AFRIMA and AFRIMMA Awards.
Burna Boy had over 200 performances across cities in the world in 2019 alone.
Burna Boy became the very few international artistes to ever receive a plaque for selling out the SSE Wembley Arena, London during the African Giant Tour.
In 2019 saw Burna Boy make appearances at the Jimmy Kimmel Live, The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and NPR.
Like they usually say; men lie, women lie, numbers don’t.
Check out the numbers Burna Boy pulled in 2019 alone, especially after he dropped his best-performing studio album yet dubbed ‘African Giant’ that was nominated at the Grammys.