Burna Boy

CTL-E-5764 · Person · musician · 1991–present

STRONG EVIDENCE evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-01209 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-P-0190 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5764. Master record source: CTL seed 2026-10-16 — UNVERIFIED, verify before public citation.

Burna Boy, born Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu on 2 July 1991 in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria, is a Nigerian singer and the defining global ambassador of Afrobeats. He broke through with the 2012 single "Like to Party" from the debut album L.I.F.E (2013), signed with Atlantic and Warner in 2017, and released Outside (2018). African Giant (2019) was Grammy-nominated for Best World Music Album; Twice as Tall won Best Global Music Album at the 63rd Grammy Awards in 2021. He became the first Nigerian artist to headline Madison Square Garden (2022) and the first African artist to headline a UK stadium, selling out London Stadium in June 2023, and his I Told Them… (2023) debuted at No. 1 on the Official UK Albums Chart, a first for an international African artist. Nigeria awarded him Member of the Order of the Federal Republic in October 2022.

The record

• Also known as: Damini Ogulu, Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu
• Role(s): musician

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Census Intake Wave 1 — 747 Program, Wave 7; first packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Burna Boy entity in the live graph at 3,443 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5764 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 3 — Famous Birthdays ABSENT census, readiness rank 462 (World Music Singers list). The census supplied the NAME ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Nigerian recording figure — diaspora scope. Vital status: LIVING — named among Forbes Africa's 15 Icons in its October–November 2026 anniversary issue; holds 2026 Grammy nominations per GRAMMY.com's artist page. CONFLICTS CARRIED: Category naming: some GRAMMY.com retrospective text calls the 2021 category "Best World Music Album"; the official win report calls it Best Global Music Album (the renamed category). The win report's wording governs. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): One Grammy win (Best Global Music Album, Twice as Tall, 2021) and a career-record four nominations at the 66th Grammys (2024) — GRAMMY.com, accessed 2026-10-16. First African artist to headline a UK stadium (London Stadium, sold out, June 2023). MEDIA: photo HELD (candidate: Wikimedia Commons and label/press photography of this subject exists; no file page was read at file-page level in this pass, so no image is cleared — CTL-PHOTO-001; a CTL-created graphic is the standing alternative); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5764-burna-boy.svg); video HELD (the Shorts Link Map catalog was checked by name and variants — no matching-entity CTL Short exists for this subject; the three catalog string-hits for "Ne-Yo" resolve to Nina Simone and John Coltrane rows, not Ne-Yo billings); audio HELD (no CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio; the subject's recordings are third-party copyrighted material). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot under the media-layer rule; maps attach to places and institutions.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No CTL-owned or rights-cleared matching-entity audio at staging; the subject's own recordings are third-party )

Referenced by

• African Giant — authored by → this record
• Twice as Tall — authored by → this record
• Ye — authored by → this record

Sources

• GRAMMY.com — Twice as Tall wins Best Global Music Album, 63rd Grammy Awards, 14 March 2021 (authoritative win record) — https://www.grammy.com/news/burna-boy-wins-best-global-music-album-twice-tall-2021-grammy-awards-show/?amp (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, "Burna Boy" — born Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, 2 July 1991, Port Harcourt; discography chronology — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burna_Boy (build store)
• Music News / Live Nation tour announcement — London Stadium sellout June 2023; Citi Field headline; I Told Them… UK No. 1 — http://www.music-news.com/news/Tickets/164864/Burna-Boy-announces-his-I-Told-Them-Tour (build store)
• https://www.dancehallmag.com/2021/03/14/news/burna-boy-wins-best-global-music-album-at-2021-grammys.html (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Nigerian Afrobeat star Burna Boy won the 2021 Grammy for Best Global Music Album for his 2020 album Twice as Tall at the 63rd Grammy Awards, reported by DancehallMag as the first Grammy win for a solo Nigerian artist; he had previously been nominated in the same category at the 2020 awards for his 2019 album African Giant.

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Record CTL-E-5764 · Combined Graph record U-01209 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 4 sources · 3 mapped relationships.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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