Burna Boy’s eight album, No Sign of Weakness is a genre-shifting, thematically uneven yet sonically impressive feast of life, love and lust with ample helpings of rage, anger and braggadocio.
Let’s focus on the bragging for a minute.
Why does one of the biggest African musical artistes of the past decade feel the compelling need to assert and re-assert his greatness? On past albums, Burna Boy has crowned himself an African Giant who is Twice as Tall yet listening to the opener “No Panic”, as well as “No Sign of Weakness”, “Dem Dey” and “Kabiyesi” and even “Empty Chairs” one is struck by his constant obsession with greatness and supposed haters.
On “Dem Dey”, he sings “if you feel say I pompous/go to the bridge and jump off,” and on tracks prior he had plied the same trajectory on the eponymous “No Sign of Weakness” even going as far as to checkmate his haters by embracing the dark side with two filmic allusions to Nollywood and Hollywood with references to rituals in “Kanayo Kanayo sacrifice all of you” and dark magic with “Like Harry Potter you are in Dumbledore’s house.”
Is Burna Boy an artiste who will do anything to stay on top despite cresting Africa’s musical stratosphere after blasting off On A Spaceship? What happens when the hits stop coming or fans’ taste and allegiances shift as often happens in the fickle world of music?
Forget his boast that “this is testimony of a born winner.” If that is true, then why the constant references to haters and enemies?
A psychological exegesis of Burna Boy’s paranoia might be worth exploring.
A genre-shifting feast
On a sonic level, the album returns, in moments to the early Burna Boy dancehall-inflected sounds from his collaborations with his first producer Leriq before diverging to embrace trap with Travis Scott, Afrobeats and Country with Shaboozey, Rock and Afropop with Mick Jagger, highlife on “Buy You Life”, reggae and lovers rock on “Sweet Love” and more with Stromae.
The enjoyment of this sonic smogarsbord is tainted by the obsession which distracts listeners from the reflective and sober turns on the album. The highlife inflected “Buy You Life” is a standout track as is “Pardon” with Stromae.
Life and its vicissitudes are the main focus on songs like the previously mentioned “Buy You Life” and even “Love” where Burna Boy reflects somewhat on the golden rule but these reflective and life affirming songs are haunted by the ghosts of haters.
Love and shades of vulnerability permeate songs like “Change Your Mind”, “Pardon”, and “Sweet Love” which is reminiscent of Gregory Isaac’s Lovers’ Rock. While “28 Grams”, a paean to marijuana is, on the surface, a comment on Burna Boy’s love for getting high and some advice to choose herbs over synthetic drugs, it is at heart a love song like “Mary Jane” by Rick James or Bob Marley’s “Kaya.”
“I no fit love you like I love marijuana,” Damini Ogulu confesses.
“Tatata”, “Comme Gimme” and “Pardon” are forged in the smithy of lust and sexual desire with Burna Boy evincing a romantic side albeit couched in the language of debauchery. On “Tatata” Burna Boy namechecks the Equitorial Guinean, Baltasar Egonga.
There is nostalgia aplenty on No Signs of Weakness from the Soul II Soul sample at the beginning of “Update” and the refrain from Lagbaja’s “No do gra-gra from me.” Those are two tracks that could attract older listeners.
“Change Your Mind” with the wave-making Shaboozey is the exceptional track on the album with its evocative lyrics and head bobbing rhythm but it ends a bit too soon at a mere 2.14 minutes.
No “Sign of Weakness” is an enjoyable sonic excursion but an uneven offering from the African Giant whose fear of failure, insistent glances in the rear view mirror and focus on haters may well be his Achilles heel.