Don’t believe everything you read in the press, Oluwa Burna has straight-lined his road to musical redemption far more than he has zig and zagged it.
A few months ago, the supremely talented but serially unfocused artiste re-entered into business with Aristokrat, the team he first got into the game with, and got reacquainted with the architect of his laid back, mid-tempo dancehall sound LeriQ. He then revisited the UK for the first time in almost 7 years in July and the rousing reception he received probably encouraged the singer to announce the release of a new EP – rightly titled Redemption – a bit prematurely. Then seemingly out of thin air, Burna Boy released said EP at the end of last week.
The Island/Universal badge is conspicuously missing from the EP’s artwork, which raises questions about the status of Burna’s reported contract with the company, which in turn raises questions about the very purpose of Redemption. There are samples from Minnie Riperton’s “Loving You” and Bell Biv Devue’s “Poison” that I’m sure would have given Universal a bit of work in trying to clear, but by interpolating them on Redemption without crediting the originators, it gives the EP an off-the-cuff, mixtape feel almost reminiscent of 2011’s Burn series. You get the feeling that the singer isn’t ready to redeem himself after his disappointing second album, On a Spaceship, this EP is just a placeholder.
Nonetheless those sampled records are given the Burna/LeriQ treatment. The high-pitch portion of “Loving You’s” chorus is interpolated to form the foundation of “Mary Jane”. The title of Burna’s version gives its subject matter away but “Mary Jane” is an atypical weed record in that it’s not actually centered around smoking, Burna instead talks about the bond he shares with those he shares blunts with and toasts to his own success. Artiste and producer, again, borrow the melody of Bell’s “Poison’s” infectious chorus to create a very late entry for a summer anthem in “Fa so LaTi Do”, while “Body to Body” starts with the swagger of a Craid David record, circa 2002, and ends with a female vocalist joining to add to the sexual intensity of the record.
But let me not mislead you into thinking that the EP only contains unoriginal music or borrowed ideas. Burna might have been born in the 90’s, as he reminds us “Plenty Song”, but as a grade A student of dancehall music and Jamaican culture, he might as well have been born 1 or 2 decades before – such is his mastery of the art of deejaying. He boasts about this musical proficiency on the paradoxically brief “Plenty Song” which sounds every bit like it was recorded in one-take. “Boshe Nlo” is better polished and feels like it could become the follow-up single to “Pree Me”, the EP’s melancholic lead single that sets the mood for the EP and sent Burna on his way to musical redemption in the first place.
There’s a section of Burna’s critics, who listened to his music way back when he was an upcomer in PH City, who feel like the influence of Yoruba on songs such as “Boshe Nlo” has become way too strong in his music. The argument is that it muddies the singer’s Ahoada roots and alienates some of his day zero fans. On the record, Burna takes a dig at some of them, specifically those that sat on the fence until he moved to Lagos and got bigger before they embraced him fully. He gloats some more as the project comes to a close on “We On”.
At 7-songs long, Redemption is shorter than the Burn tapes but you understand the timing of its release and possibly the hurry to get it out. There’s currently a strong commercial interest in Nigerian music from America the international community and Burna Boy is far too talented to be left out of the wave.
The singer has tasted continental success but there’s absolutely no reason why he cannot aim higher, especially now that he has familiar faces around him. None. As he tries to get there, this EP feels like the first step on the road to redemption rather than the last and a work in progress rather than the finished product.