Nigerian music star Burna Boy has apologised for earlier comments distancing himself from Afrobeats, a genre he helped bring to international stages.

The singer says the backlash from fans and the wider industry made him understand the importance of the Afrobeats label in pushing the sound forward globally.

Burna Boy, whose real name is Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, sparked criticism in 2023 after a widely circulated Apple Music interview where he said Afrobeats "lacks substance" and that most artists within it had "almost no real-life experiences".

The remarks stirred debate, especially because Burna Boy is seen as one of the leading figures of the genre.

Speaking during an interview with 1Xtra’s Eddie Kadi, Burna Boy said the reaction to his words opened his eyes to why the genre label matters. “I got the point of the Afrobeats tag in that moment,” he said. “I totally get it and I apologise for that confusion.”

He explained that at the time of the interview, he felt frustrated that his music was being put into a single category.

“I didn’t understand why people wanted my music to be inside one box,” he said. “The way I saw it, if you just put everything into Afrobeats, you're now comparing Socrates to Kendrick Lamar because they both said two things that rhyme so they both must be rappers.”

Burna Boy said he was going through a difficult period in his personal life when he made those comments. “I wasn’t the happiest man in the world,” he admitted. “I was in a dark place mentally.”

Despite the backlash, Burna Boy said the "division" his comments caused helped him better understand his own views. Now, he says, he has accepted that the Afrobeats label plays an important role and he leans into it in his latest album No Sign of Weakness, released last week. “I learnt to embrace the fact that I will always be different,” he said. “I’m not going to be the favourite but I’m going to be the best.”

Burna Boy made history in 2023 as the first African artist to headline a stadium show in the UK, adding to his achievements which include a Grammy award and a string of hits on the Official UK Afrobeats chart. Today, he boasts nearly 24 million monthly listeners on Spotify.

Even with his success, Burna Boy says his main love remains performing live. Over the weekend, he performed at Wireless Festival, and he’s currently on a European and North American tour that will run until the end of the year.

“I want to be able to do this until I die,” he said. “I want to be doing this the way someone like Coldplay has been doing it for a long time, or The Rolling Stones.”

He said he’s puzzled that there aren’t more Black artists performing well into older age on the biggest stages. “These people are still doing what I'm doing now, so why don’t I see anyone that looks like me, on those levels, at that age?” he asked. “And it’s simple, it might sound crazy, it’s because they just don’t love it as much as I do.”

This passion drove him to reach out to one of his idols, Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, to collaborate on his new song Empty Chairs. “Mick Jagger is the rock star,” said Burna. “I felt he, out of everyone in the world, would understand where I was coming from with this song lyrically and he did.”

Reflecting on the experience, Burna Boy described working with the 81-year-old rock legend as “one of the best experiences I’ve had.”