Grammy Award-winning Afrobeats singer Damini Ogulu, popularly known as Burna Boy, has revealed that he recorded his first-ever song when he was just 13 years old.
He made the revelation during a chat with Apple Music’s Ebro Darden, as he detailed the step-by-step process of how he recorded the song.
Burna, now 34 years old, recounted that he used a radio and a tape recorder for the recording, while he obtained the beat from video game soundtracks.
He noted that the video games he used include NBA Street, Volume II and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Burna said, “The First song I ever recorded was by myself, you wouldn’t even believe this. I had a tape, a radio, and I had a tape recorder, whatever, and I would use the beat from video games and some shit.
“So I used one from NBA Street, Volume II, I think, one from Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas, it was one of the GTAs, one of the early GTAs, I guess. So the first song I recorded was with that, playing that beat and then recording and then, yeah, that’s how it went. How old was I, man? I don’t know, man. I can’t remember. Yeah, around 13.”
Meanwhile, in an earlier interview on The Official UK Afrobeats Chart Show with Eddie Kadi, Burna apologized for his infamous statement about Afrobeats lacking substance.
The Grammy winner explained that with the knowledge he now possesses, he wouldn’t have made those disparaging comments about Afrobeats.
Retracting the statement, Burna stated that at the time of making the statement, he didn’t know that Afrobeats was an umbrella term used to advance Nigerian music as a collective, rather than just being a music genre.
