As expected fans and prominent individuals have been lavishing Damini Ogulu a.k.a Burna Boy praises ever since he won his first-ever prestigious Grammy Award for the Best Global Music Album category for the album Twice As Tall.
This is his second nomination as he was nominated last year for Best World Music Album but lost out to Angelique Kidjo.
So you may be wondering what lessons exactly can his win teach you?
Let us dig in?
*Don’t label yourself by what you go through*
Though Burna Boy just like every other artiste started small, but he didn’t allow the challenges he encountered during his days of small beginnings to impede his zeal. The 29 year old singer called himself an African giant even before he won that Grammy award. When he called himself an African Giant, many thought he was being hubristic and haughty, Nigerian Twitter users ridiculed him; but when he started gaining international acclaim from the ‘African Giant’ album, his critics began paying him attention. In his words:” It is an incredible privilege to have a platform and at the same time, it is a burden as you have to ensure you’re using your platform for the right things. It’s also important to realize that you can’t please everyone.
It means a lot to me and the continent that African music is once again being accepted and consumed globally. It is time that the world started listening to Africa because like I have always said, music started from Africa and I feel like when everything is going in the opposite direction, like what is going on right now, everybody runs home”.
* Don’t dwell on your defeats*
Nobody likes to fail. We are programmed at an early stage to be believe failure is bad. The sad part is at times when we fail ,we would rather blame someone else than take responsibility for our defeats.
Back in March 2020, when Burna lost his first Grammy nomination to Angelique Kidjo he was distraught. A fan asked him on Twitter how he felt, the ‘Ye’ crooner said: “Sick. Totally sick. But my musical mother @angeliquekidjo told me everything I needed to understand about the Grammys. So now I am ‘Twice as tall’.
He didn’t dwell on the defeat, and in the spirit of sportsmanship learnt the secret of winning from the veteran musician, Angelique Kidjo. Adversity has its own advantages.
*Embrace Excellence*
You would agree with me that Burna Boy autographs his songs with excellence. The Fader describes him this way: “He is a master at not only blending sounds of West Africa, but also incorporating elements of dancehall and hip-hop to create afro-fusion”.
No one wins the Grammy by accident, Burna Boy put in a lot of work into his songs. Little wonder his 2018 ‘Outside’ album gave him an opportunity to perform at Coachella. Excellence is a commitment to doing better every day.
*Don’t’ joke with your visibility*
Attention is the currency of marketing. Though Burna Boy’s music gets our attention, he however had to do the herculean work of sustaining the attention and this doesn’t happen by just knowing how to sing. Talent alone didn’t take him to the top.His mother runs his business, BukiHQ handles his PR and he has a team that intentionally puts him in the spotlight positively. He is not a perfect man, he is flawed like many of us. But he doesn’t allow his weakness to stop him from soaring.
You don’t have to be another Burna Boy, but all these lessons can be adopted and adapted into your own sector or sphere of influence.
John Wesley puts it this way:” Light yourself on fire with passion and people will come from miles to watch you burn.”
