Burna Boy: I Told Them… Album Review – Warungku Terkini

Contextualizing I Told Them, the album, is a valid project as Burna Boy further explores the ’90s U.S. hip-hop he grew up loving, preemptively hedging skepticism even as he infuses the songs with Wu-Tang Clan members, boom-bap beats, and a Brandy sample (on the ebulliently 1998-sounding “Sittin on Top of the World,” which also features 21 Savage delivering his best Mason Betha flow). Released from the wallpapery niceness that sometimes characterized 2022’s Love, Damini, Burna Boy explores the spoils of his talent and renown, weaving triumphantly through wealth, women, weed, and, on the J Hus-sampling “City Boys,” creatively rhyming “ice cream” with “disgusting.” Throughout his victory lap, he experiments with form to winning effect. On standout “Giza,” Burna and young Nigerian powerhouse Seyi Vibez craft an international mobster movie over a beat that smolders like amapiano turned inside out, and on the sax-reggae joint “Tested, Approved & Trusted,” a man has never pleaded more sincerely for a woman to “jump upon my body like animal” mid-wine.

There is a sense of self-reflection, too, after a “Virgil” interlude that captures the late designer Virgil Abloh philosophizing extremely Virgilly about how Burna Boy can further connect with the masses. “Big 7,” which pours some out for Virgil and posthumous collaborator Sidhu Moose Wala, the Indian rapper who was murdered in 2022, makes being “wavy since morning” sound like the most beautiful thing in the world—despite its lyrics warning everyone away because he simply can’t talk to them in his altered state. Moments like this, including the easy minimalism of “On Form” and the self-reflective, Kwabs-sampling “Cheat on Me,” featuring the London rapper Dave, are emblematic of Burna Boy’s growth, reflecting his hope to translate “the temperature of the times” into his music, as he says in a conversation with RZA in I Told Them magazine.

Still, he has a notorious, if occasional, inability to stay out of his own way. On “Thanks,” he falls into the superstar’s trap of taking criticism as a knockdown attempt, coming after some Naija fans for a perceived lack of support and allowing J. Cole to devolve into an eyerolly, self-referential bromide against PC culture. It’s misguided, particularly on an otherwise fascinating track that chops his vocals into a flanged and skittering mini-cyclone of guitar and beats. An underdog needs a powerful opponent, but creating one when the world says he’s winning is beneath Burna Boy’s talent, particularly after a reverent interlude, “12 Jewels,” in which the longtime Five Percenter RZA enumerates the life tenets toward which a man should aspire. Fortunately Burna Boy is dextrous enough to evade his own traps, and that emotional range is a huge part of his appeal—that he can believably move from lashing out to roadman fuckery to spiritual deliverance, as on the acoustic-guitar devotional “If I’m Lying.” “Every day, I just dey give thanks for life,” he sings. “Know how to move ’cause I know how to sacrifice.” Burna Boy has more than established himself; I Told Them is an adventurous promise that he won’t become complacent.