Grammy award-winner, Burna Boy’s troubles began about two weeks ago when with sadistic abandon he ordered a fan and her partner out of his show at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Denver for sleeping while he performed. “Please take her the f*ck home. Fast, Fast.
Take her home. I’m not doing no more songs until you take her home,” he thundered over disapproving boos from the audience.” According to Culturecustodian.com, until the lady and her partner, visibly enervated, were escorted out by security, he dawdled onstage, his band playing softly in the background. Not long after, clips from the event stirred holy indignation on the internet and fans began calling him out and demanding that he conduct himself with some contrition.
At this point Burna Boy either had no sense of the volatility of the situation or was affecting gleeful indifference because shortly after, he posted a video berating his fans. “Zero gbezome. I tell una say make una be my fans?
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Me wey dey look for fans wey get money this period.” As he trounces around the room with his hands in the pockets of his blue hoodie, Burna Boy and five or so other men in the room let out bellicose laughter. In a screenshot circulating online, purportedly by the lady Burna Boy marched out of his show, she explains that had had a tough few days. Her son’s father had recently died.
Work that day had been grueling. On top of that, Burna Boy took the stage later than scheduled. As such by the time the show was underway she was exhausted and had to quickly rest her head before popping back up to claim whatever entertainment her VIP ticket still offered.
The screenshot further claims that the incident has caused her immense emotional distress. In the past few days criticism against Burna Boy has ramped up to a fever pitch. TikTok is awash with clips from a motley group of indignant fans.
Some of the clips speak directly to the incident, others feature indignant fans performing the quasi-political act of canceling their tickets to his concerts. Internet sleuths have also busied themselves with reviving old controversies: there’s the series of tweets and Instagram stories posts from 2022 in which Ghanaian rapper Shatta Wale, a former friend of Burna Boy, claims they both raped each other’s girlfriends. There has also been that infamous clip where we see him summon his security to cart a fan away because their face didn’t look “encouraging.” There’s Burna Boy’s 2022 Eko Atlantic show where he berated and gaslighted his fans after arriving some eight hours after the show was scheduled to start.
As an apology, he dispatched an incoherent patchwork of grievances—“Una say I kill people for Cubana, you say my mama dance for Fela”—before signing off with a very decorous “If you no like me, na God go punish you.” What has especially made the backlash from Burna Boy’s international fans especially intense is that details of many of his missteps, which had previously been sequestered to Nigerian media, have begun to violently percolate within his international fans. Several American media personalities have also commented on the situation including Joe Budden who wistfully recalled Burna Boy at the height of his powers just after Last Last dropped, and DJ Akademiks who joked about how many free tickets he’s been able to get thanks to the situation. Days ago, amid a welter of fake news claiming Burna boy had cancelled his entire US tour, he cancelled shows in Minneapolis and Chicago. Many observers have chalked up these cancellations to audience fatigue in these areas and yet it’s hard not to draw a straight line between the intense scrutiny he finds himself under and these cancellations.
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