Standing at an impressive 6ft, perhaps there’s no artiste on the Afrobeats scene as towering as Burna Boy.

More significantly, in terms of global impact and influence, only a handful of his contemporaries measure up. Could this possibly be why he is referred to as the “African Giant”? Where exactly did the nickname come from?

Here’s what we know:

So the story behind the nickname “African Giant” is one of a “self-fulfilling prophecy”!

To explain this, we would have to time travel back to January 2019 when Burna Boy was billed to make his debut appearance on the Coachella stage.

Burna Boy however had reservations about Coachella organizers placing his name in small fonts. In a now infamous outburst on Twitter he publicly expressed his discontent, stating that this was unbefitting of his status as an “African Giant”, and the nickname has stuck since!

“African Giant” doubled as the title of Burna Boy’s fourth studio album which dropped later that year, earning him his first-ever Grammy nomination. 

Talk about speaking things into existence!!!