Meet Chuka Obi, The Man Behind Burna Boy’s Twice As Tall Album Cover
Last year, a tweet asking people to share their “most random music fact” orbited Nigerian Twitter. In the replies, comments told stories of moments with superstars from different cities across the world.
Multidisciplinary artist, Chuka Obi arrived late to the online trend, but the insights he provided about Nigerian pop culture were riveting. Who’d have thought the omnipresent percussion which powered 9ice's break-out hit, “Gongo Aso” was initially passed up by artists like, P-Square and Ruggedman? Or that the first 500,000 copies of 2Face Idibia’s sophomore Grass 2 Grace was purchased by one guy, and the only way to get the album was through him?
A year after that thread, Obi landed a gig to design the album cover for Burna Boy's Grammy-winning Twice As Tall album. Chuka is still flush from the shared victory when I caught up with him after Grammy week. “When I heard Burna Boy in 2011 or so, I knew he was special,” says Chuka, on a Zoom call “He was doing music that had loads of vibes but he was also paying special attention to what he was saying”.
Burna Boy’s authenticity endeared Chuka to his music, and he became an early evangelist of sorts for the African Giant. Chuka didn't actually meet Burna Boy until 2019, but both men quickly developed a rapport. One day Burna played Chuka some records off what would become his fourth studio album. “At the time there was no discussion of me doing the album cover,” says Chuka. There was a precedence to the idea though: Burna and Chuka bonded over comics and cartoons.
As a child, Chuka says he wanted a similar job as Marvel Comics legendary editor and publisher, Stan Lee. Burna Boy, no less cut from the same cloth as Obi, often tells the media of how he coined his name from superhero comic books. "He was a huge fan of comics and Spiderman was his favourite. He wanted to be a superhero growing up and ‘Burna Boy’ was his superhero name." Chuka adds. This bond was pivotal in how their relationship as co-collaborators evolved. Burna’s camp wanted a comic book to accompany Twice As Tall and had been working with an American company to oversee that, but “it wasn’t blending” because the contractors failed to grasp the Nigerian context that such a project would require. They reached out to Chuka Obi. “I started consulting [and along the line] it became clear it was best they cut their losses and get me to oversee the entire project. I got in my team and we created The Secret Flame.” With the comic book done, Chuka began sketching the album art for Twice As Tall,
The end result is now the world-famous image of Burna Boy, depicted with the magnitude of King-Kong, stomping over the brown earth. It captured Burna Boy's aspirations for astronomical greatness that dwarfs even monumental wonders of the real world. On the cover, Burna stands tall over huge landmarks like The Kilimanjaro, the Egyptian Sphinx and Pyramids, the Timbuktu University and the Isaac Boro monument located in Burna Boy's hometown, Port Harcourt.
When I ask Chuka what makes Burna Boy such a uniquely successful brand, the conversation switches from music entirely. “I think it’s having come to a place in his career where he’s comfortable and he has a team that’s comfortable regardless of however the situation gets,” says Chuka. “You’d notice that of the three biggest artists in Nigeria, Burna Boy has the least amount of fans in Nigeria and he gets the most hate on social media. But because he has accepted certain truths, that not everybody will see or understand you, you’re fine.”
Chuka Obi's life as a creator exalts rarely celebrated playmakers, behind the scenes of contemporary African pop culture. “My friends used to come by the house and my parents would feed us, even when there was no money,” said Chuka. After hours of sketching comic book characters, Chuka and his friends would test rhymes against each other. This group of friends were teenagers in the early 2000s when Nigerian hip-hop and contemporary Afropop was just taking off nationally.
In 2001, Chuka adopted DaSuki as a rap alter-ego and began recording music with his friends as a rap collective called The Kaliphate. "The first studio we ever went to was called Goldmine Studios, in Palmgroove Estate. "The quality of the work that came out from there was always better because it was a high-end studio. But we couldn’t afford to keep going to such places so I’m happy a lot of smaller studios started popping up,” he says, conceding that “these small studios—because of how software democratises production—are the reason why Nigerian music is as evolved as it is [because] everybody could actually spend time perfecting their craft.”
Chuka thinks “[The Kaliphates] never took it as far as they should,” but also adds, they were never really trying to 'blow'. So it was a surprise when I asked if Nigerian rap struggled to reach a mass audience and he agreed. But instead of content, he blames a lack of innovation and inventiveness. Using Drake, as a case study, he notes how frequently the Canadian rapper dips into developing cultural trends, creating a spot for himself before they become popular and, soon, saturated.
“The way to [succeed as a creator] is to understand the people,” suggests Chuka. “The so-called local guys are doing fine; Olamide is still having as many streams as any of the top pop musicians, but he’s a rapper still. Phyno is still doing crazy numbers. It’s not necessarily about rap as much as the rappers being able to do the music the audience want to connect to. They have to create music that’s relevant to the Nigerian market today. That’s what M.I Abaga did. If a rapper’s coming today, he has to do the same. And there are certain things you can do to help yourself with it. For example, M.I using the track with Flavour (“Number One”) to penetrate the East because he knew it would work. So let them find out: who are the people you need to collaborate with? Whether it’s from a production or rap perspective; a lot of times, rappers are using rap producers, meanwhile, maybe you should go and hit up the guy who’s producing the biggest hits for the biggest pop artists, and find a way to do a project with that kind of a person, and let’s see what happens. Don’t do the normal route, do something different.”
Chuka himself is still releasing music through his rap alter ego, DaSuki. DaSuki released two projects, last year’s Coat of Arms and the newly released, Black Godzilla. The song titles on the project are wordplays on a famous expression or socio-cultural references from everyday life. For example, on the fifth track “Five To Nine,” he speaks of how Lagos-based employees leave their homes by 5AM to beat the traffic and return home as late as 9PM for obvious reasons.
Chuka Obi says he’s still evolving as a creator. He tells me he is working on a book and producing a handful of podcasts. Yet, he affirms with a loud laugh that he’s still as hungry as anyone, and will continue to pull his weight across the board, whether that means, more art, more collabs or more music.