•Burna Boy
Six years after its release, Burna Boy’s ‘Twice As Tall’ has surpassed two billion streams globally, marking another milestone for an album that helped redefine the scale at which an African artist could operate on the world stage.
Released on August 14, 2020, ‘Twice As Tall’ arrived on the momentum of ‘African Giant’, but represented something bigger than a follow-up.
If ‘African Giant’ announced Burna Boy’s arrival as a global force, ‘Twice As Tall’ confirmed it, reports Daily Independent.
Across 15 tracks, Burna brought together an international cast of collaborators, including Senegalese icon Youssou N’Dour, Naughty By Nature, Sauti Sol, Chris Martin and Stormzy. Songs including ‘Level Up (Twice As Tall)’, ‘Wonderful’, ‘Onyeka (Baby)’, ‘Monsters You Made’, ‘Real Life’, ‘Way Too Big’ and ’23’ moved between ambition, identity, history, resilience and social consciousness while remaining unmistakably rooted in Burna Boy’s own sound and perspective.
The album’s reception reflected that ambition. ‘Twice As Tall’ debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s World Albums chart, reaching No. 54 on the Billboard 200 and No. 11 on the Official UK Albums Chart. Pitchfork ranked it among its 50 Best Albums of 2020.
Its defining recognition came at the 63rd Annual GRAMMY Awards in 2021, when ‘Twice As Tall’ won Best Global Music Album, giving Burna Boy his first GRAMMY Award and cementing a pivotal chapter in his international career.
The album also marked an important evolution in Burna Boy’s global footprint. What had begun as the international breakthrough of ‘African Giant’ was becoming something more durable: an African artist building audiences across continents, collaborating without surrendering identity, and increasingly operating at the highest levels of the global music industry.
That trajectory would continue beyond “Twice As Tall’, as Burna Boy moved from breakthrough artist to global headliner, taking African music into some of the world’s biggest venues and onto its most significant stages.
Six years later, the numbers are catching up with what ‘Twice As Tall’ had already established.
More than two billion streams, a GRAMMY and a catalogue of songs that continue to travel around the world, ‘Twice As Tall’ remains a defining record in Burna Boy’s career — and evidence that his global ascent was never simply about crossing over.
It was about changing the scale of what was possible.
