Burna Boy Makes Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People

Nigerian singer, Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, popularly known as Burna Boy, has made it to the Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influence People of 2024 list.

The ‘Last Last’ hitmaker was grouped into the Icons category alongside others like celebrated actress Taraji Penda Henson, movie director Sophia Coppola, businessman and billionaire Mark Cuban and 25-year-old Palestinian photographer, Motaz Azaiza.

In a statement on Wednesday, April 17, Time Magazine said: “We spend months discussing who belongs on the TIME100, the people who we believe most changed the stories that define the past year.”

For its essay on Burna Boy, the magazine chose multi-Grammy-winning singer Angelique Kidjo to pay tribute to the Afrobeats star.

She wrote: “Ten years ago or so, when young African musicians would come to me for advice, I would tell them, “You don’t need to mimic American artists! The world needs the amazing richness and beauty of our traditional African music and our culture. This land is where most of modern music comes from. This source of inspiration is inexhaustible. Its freshness and its elegance will get the world’s attention for sure.”

Burna Boy has made that vision a global reality. 

Inspired by the fantastic drums of Nigerian folk music, and studied in the craft of the great African singer-songwriters, he follows in the footsteps of Fela Kuti—the internationally celebrated Afrobeats artist and activist. 

Burna Boy’s deeply original flow and his signature groove have conquered the world with an impressive series of firsts: in 2023, he became the first African artist to sell out a U.S. stadium, and in 2024, he became the first Afrobeats artist to sing at the Grammys.

He is history in the making. Now a whole generation of young people from the continent is looking up to him.”