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The first 30 seconds of Burna Boy’s Love, Damini is a wormhole into a not-so-distant African past – or so it sounds. On landing, you find yourself in a paradise on earth, an undisturbed scenery of dew drops on green leaves, grey rheboks jumping in the fields and griots chanting, leaving goose-bumped bodies coursing through a passage.
But it is Damini ‘Burna Boy’ Ogulu himself truly coming of age, turning 30, rising from the rites, breaking forth and singing “Glory”. The song, a proem, inherently foretells – either by word or sound – what to expect from the next songs: sadness, hope, strength, struggles, love and lust.
At the hook came the sound of glory: “said first things first/ I finna let you know that I been bad since birth/ Then I started workin’ twice as hard/ But I stick around like herpes, I ain’t lettin’ up” – in a manner, pleasing, of something breaking forth from its cocoons or gas escaping from a rattled bottle of carbonated drink.
The griots seal ‘Glory’ with an outgoing harmonious hue, and we are back where we began: an ancestral village of beauty.
Of course, Love, Damini itself is an album of beauty. It completes Burna Boy’s fourth successful album even if it does not match the rounded Twice As Tall, nor would it overtake the eye-opening African Giant, which was a jolt after a series of not-so-great projects from the self-acclaimed Afro-fusion artiste.
African Giant was a rebirth – nay: a birth, an upheaval in sound, creativity, styles, worldview and themes. That album, if Outside set the premise, dared to create, and I dare say it came out victorious. It took Burna’s music to epic proportions, with On the Low receiving 15 million streams in France and awarded a gold plaque by the National Syndicate of Phonographic Publishing (SNEP).
Its fruitful sequel, Twice as Tall, was a literal gala. An apple that didn’t fall too far from the tree, the project turned loose from the same creative soil but built upon it, creating a meeting point whose lines were perceivable yet unreadable, like the point where the earth vanishes into the sky. The Grammy-winning album balanced Burna’s “signature sound with hints of exploration in collaborations such as ‘Monsters You Made’, all while remaining true to his mother tongue”, Nicolas-Tyrell Scott of New Music Express (NME) concluded.
Love, Damini is neither a birth nor a rebirth. It represents growth: an embellishment of works, the need to consolidate, to touch on what already is, to polish up.
So, If the project doesn’t match the success of the two previous albums, the Grammy Award winner deserves to be indulged. After all, the creative site is not only an exhaustive one, but creativity itself “involves breaking out of expected patterns in order to look at things in a different way”, as Edward de Bono would say.
Meanwhile, such experimentation could make or mar. And Love, Damini becomes a damsel that was whispering soliloquies along a bush path, who then wandered into distress. But there’s no cause for alarm. The good deeds of this damsel are heroes with a thousand faces, waiting to save her in times of trouble.
In reality, Burna Boy has set a standard so high that an impressive album, when juxtaposed with its prequels, may be perceived as just decent or even mediocre. Love, Damini is that album: it is not at the heights of Twice as Tall, yet it is not at a low like albums from most of its peers.
‘Science’ is a continuation of ‘Glory’, and it resumes the period of paradise disturbed that the midpoint of the latter began. However, lust replaces struggles and hope as angelic, ancestral voices give in to bops, horns and sirens about being jazzed by a lady: Everybody know that I’m the gyal dem controller/ Anywhere mi dey mi want the girl dem come over/ You’re playing Russian roulette with loaded revolver…”.
‘Cloak & Dagger’ follows a South-side vibe and urban groove. J Hus’ lyrics sound like words out of the mouth of Bugzy Malone; however, his are laid back and relaxed yet confident and undaunted. Burna impersonates a gangster, looking like “a robber”, moving with “cloak and dagger/ black bandana/ diamond teeth”, stunting on his haters and rising above hate.
‘Jagele’, a sing-along with a similar thread to ‘Science’, is overtaken by ‘Whiskey’, quickly reminding us that we are listening to music by an artiste who can talk about both: women and societal ills. “Pollution make the air turn black/ Because of oil and gas, my city so dark” shows the state of air pollution in Port Harcourt. “Some they walk on the other side of town, dey dem for hold up”, perhaps, represents Lagos and its bustle.
In that “side of town”, some beg for alms in traffic, some have their houses flooded. Yet, all must stay hopeful – even if it means drinking away your sorrows.
‘Last Last’ stands out among the following four songs. One, because it is the album’s single; two, because a confession of heartbreak is striking and uncharacteristic of the African Giant. No wonder the song is seemingly de-personalized, a covert admission wrapped in indifference as in “na everybody go chop breakfast”, and in digression as in “I dey Portharcourt when dem kill Soboma”.
Furthermore, it features a musical mastery, polished by the sampling of Toni Braxton’s sonorous 2000 single ‘He Wasn’t Man Enough’, that even an Amapiano remix of Squid Game’s sound bite in ‘Different Sizes’ – of backsides – featuring Victony could not outdo.
‘Dirty Secrets’ marks the beginning of a downturn and an unfortunate drop in appeal of the project. As Burna inclines into the real rollercoaster he portended, he opens his music to a more foreign audience, elasticising Dancehall, Hip-Hop and Pop. As such, ‘Toni-Ann Singh’ featuring Popcaan opens itself to a Caribbean audience, ‘Rollercoaster’ featuring J Balvin opens itself to Latino audiences, while ‘For My Hand’ featuring Ed Sheeran and ‘Solid’ featuring blxst and Kehlani open themselves to a European and American audience.
The marriage of introspection, poignant themes, chill-vibes, movement away from the homefront and vocal adaptability in one fell swoop suggest an overarching but no less overambitious take. Let’s say ‘Rollercoaster’ was not strained; ‘For My Hand’ was trite and Khalid’s gentle flow upon lambent keys in ‘Wild Dreams’ received a setback from Burna’s convenient, reckless use of Martin Luther King’s quote – a desperate and contrived attempt at erudition.
In any case, only ‘Common Person’, a more comfortable vocal space for Burna, splattered upon by playful solo guitars, a fantastic saxophone and an excellent backing choir, could salvage a series of drab, tragically unconvincing and flattering turns.
Burna’s intentionality with his music comes to the fore as the album closes. ‘Love, Damini’ are the words that end the song titled ‘Love, Damini’, in the Love, Damini album, which is not so surprising as Burna Boy has been known to ensure that his albums, if they don’t take chronological turns, have some unique structural foregrounding – the transition from ‘Level Up’ to ‘Alarm Clock’ in Twice As Tall for example.
Love, Damini is a personal album that takes the audience through the highs and lows of its creator. But it does not end there, it tingles in the mind of human nature and that of the society around him, chiming in collections of experiences such as hope, struggle, triumph and love. It, therefore, combines too much: a sense of responsibility, the need to “buss a whine”, and everything in between.
Love, Damini, like African Giant and Twice As Tall, rises like a mountain – but it is a mountain of ice perspiring under the watchful eyes of the sun, never blooming to the proportions that the audience and the creator himself would desire.
The album ends where it begins: an undisturbed scenery of dew drops on green leaves, grey rheboks jumping in the fields and griots chanting, leaving goose-bumped bodies coursing through a passage – a mist.
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Source: TheNet
