Burna Boy Toronto Concert — Next Date & Ticket Alerts

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About Burna Boy

Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu was born July 2, 1991 in Port Harcourt, the oil-and-rivers capital of Nigeria's Niger Delta, the eldest of three children of Bose Ogulu — who later became his manager and the public face of his touring operation — and Samuel Ogulu. The household was steeped in music: his maternal grandfather Benson Idonije had managed Fela Anikulapo Kuti through the peak Kalakuta Republic years and remained a working music journalist and broadcaster, and the family record collection ran across Fela, Bob Marley, Toots and the Maytals, Sunny Adé, Ebenezer Obey, Wasiu Ayinde, and the broader Afrobeat-highlife-reggae lineage that Damini absorbed before he was a teenager. He was sent to Corona Secondary School in Lagos and later to Montessori boarding in the UK, completed his A-levels at Greenoak International School in Port Harcourt, and read media communications and culture at the University of Sussex and Oxford Brookes before returning to Nigeria around 2010 to chase the music full-time. Early mixtapes circulated on Lagos and Port Harcourt USB drives; a 2011 freestyle on Like to Party with the chorus that would later anchor the studio version got him signed to Aristokrat Records out of Lagos. L.I.F.E. (Leaving an Impact for Eternity) dropped in 2013 with Like to Party, Tonight, and Run My Race as the breakout cuts and established him as part of the same Nigerian generation as Wizkid, Davido, and Olamide. On a Spaceship followed in 2015 on his own Spaceship Entertainment imprint after he split from Aristokrat. Outside in 2018, his Atlantic Records and Bad Habit debut in the UK, broke him outside Africa — Ye, the album's emotional centerpiece (no relation to the Kanye West album of the same title, though the timing of both releases on the same day in June 2018 turbocharged his streaming numbers when the algorithm conflated the two), became the song that introduced him to non-African audiences who'd never sat with an Afro-fusion track before. African Giant in 2019 was the cultural pivot — a 19-track full-length with Anybody, Gum Body with Jorja Smith, Pull Up, Killin Dem with Zlatan, and On the Low at the center, plus features from Damian Marley, Future, YG, Angélique Kidjo, and M.anifest. The Coachella billing controversy that year, where his name was listed in smaller font on the lineup poster, prompted his viral statement that he was an African Giant and would not be belittled, and the moniker stuck. Twice as Tall arrived August 2020 with Diddy as executive producer, won the Grammy for Best Global Music Album in March 2021, and made him the first standalone Nigerian artist to take home the category. Love, Damini in July 2022 widened the palette into more pop and R&B territory with Last Last as the global breakout — a Toni Braxton He Wasn't Man Enough sample over Afrobeats drums that became his biggest single by streaming volume. I Told Them... in 2023 leaned into harder hip-hop and reggae-dancehall structures with Sittin' on Top of the World, City Boys, Tested Approved & Trusted, and Big 7 as the singles, and 21 Savage, J. Cole, RZA, GZA, Dave, and Byron Messia among the features. No Sign of Weakness in 2025 returned to harder Afrobeats and Afro-fusion drums with the same global feature roster intact, anchored on Sweet Love, Update, Bundle by Bundle, and TaTaTa. The Spaceship Entertainment label and management operation has stayed in-house with mother Bose Ogulu at its center; the Atlantic/Bad Habit relationship internationally has held; and the touring footprint has scaled from clubs in 2014 to UK and US stadium nights inside a decade.

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