Burna Boy Calls On Diddy, Stormzy, Youssou N’Dour And More For New Album

After teasing us all with a surreal animated visual on his socials, Burna Boy has now released his new album Twice As Tall. After the runaway success of last year’s seminal African Giant, which enjoyed unmitigated critical and commercial success, the pressure was on to follow it up with a worthy successor.

Features-wise, it’s still a quality-over-quantity approach. Much of the album falls on Burna’s shoulders alone, but the few guest spots that do appear have been reserved for the very top tier in both stature and credibility. Striking a similar balance of Western and African features, the tracklist includes appearances from UK titan Stormzy, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, New Jersey hip-hop legends Naughty By Nature, Senagelse icon and multi-hyphenate Youssou N’Dour, and Kenyan Afro-pop band Sauti Sol.

Production-wise it’s a similar story. P Diddy acts as executive producer, while the hands-on work comes from stateside talents Timbaland, Mario Winans, Mike Dean, and DJDS, French rapper and producer Skread, J Hus hit-maker JAE5, and Nigerian producers Leriq, Rexxie, Telz, and Sauti Sol. It’s also worth noting that almost all of the album was recorded in Lagos. While that’s most likely because of COVID-19 restrictions, Burna appears to have turned the situation to his advantage to create a blockbuster album that has so far been met with universal praise.