2019 BET Best International Act and Apple Music Up Next artist Burna Boy just dropped his fifth studio album Twice as Tall. This album follows a big 2019 where he was included in one of the songs of the year in Location by Dave and dropped his best album to date African Giant. That being said, the expectations were big. Knowing that, it was hard to not be disappointed with this album. The expectation for me really was an album with a lot of vibey beats and Burna Boy showcasing his elite, versatile vocals but damn near every song sounded the same. Not only the same as every song on this album, but it also shows little growth and individualization from his past albums. And that’s talking about the instrumentals and the vocals. A positive I can think of is that there is evident influence from his African heritage in the African percussion that you can hear being used in the instrumentals, but it is heavily overused and sounds the same on almost every track. The lyrics don’t hold too much meaning on any of the songs, either. I found myself keep on giving this album second chances as I knew there was an eventual Stormzy feature coming, and as we all know Stormzy is a polarizing artist who can turn damn near any track from meh to fire. Even the Stormzy feature didn’t add too much to the track Real Life. Overall I was let down to say the least. Very let down. However, I’ll end the review on a high note and say that it was a pleasant surprise to hear Naughty By Nature feature on a track on this album.
Our official rating: 34/90
Best Songs
- Naughty By Nature (feat. Naughty By Nature)
- Wettin Dey Sup
- Real Life (feat. Stormzy)
Worst Songs
- Wonderful
- Comma
- 23
Positives
- Pleasant surprise to see Naughty By Nature on the features
- Any time you can get Stormzy on an album, it’s a dub
- Regardless of being a subpar album, Burna Boy still has a great and unique voice
Negatives
- Little variety in the production
- Subject matter in the lyrics is really mediocre
- The album overall was just boring. It brought nothing new to the table and was just too repetitive.
*RATING SCALE FOR ALBUM*
We take the average score of every song and use that as the overall rating
Song rating scale:
10-50: worse than we expected (bad) 50-65: what we expected (good) 65-80 : going on the playlist (heat) 80-90: what the streets needed (a legendary record)