Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, better known as Burna Boy, has been honoured as one of TIME100 Most Influential People in 2024. The 32-year old Grammy award-winning artist joins the ranks of icons such as American businessman Mark Cuban, popular movie star Taraji Henson, and Thelma Golden, nominated by Michelle Obama.
Burna Boy on TIME100 Influential People List.
Burna Boy’s nomination came from Angelique Kidjo, a respected colleague and fellow Grammy winner, having clinched the prestigious award five times. Her nomination statement, which secured Burnaboy’s place on the list, reads…
Ten years ago or so, when young African musicians would come to me for advice, I would tell them, “You don’t need to mimic American artists! The world needs the amazing richness and beauty of our traditional African music and our culture. This land is where most of modern music comes from. This source of inspiration is inexhaustible. Its freshness and its elegance will get the world’s attention for sure.”
Burna Boy has made that vision a global reality. Inspired by the fantastic drums of Nigerian folk music, and studied in the craft of the great African singer-songwriters, he follows in the footsteps of Fela Kuti—the internationally celebrated Afrobeats artist and activist. Burna Boy’s deeply original flow and his signature groove have conquered the world with an impressive series of firsts: in 2023, he became the first African artist to sell out a U.S. stadium, and in 2024, he became the first Afrobeats artist to sing at the Grammys.
He is history in the making. Now a whole generation of young people from the continent is looking up to him.
Burna Boy is the only Nigerian on the highly covered TIME100 2024 list.
See the complete list of TIME100 Most Influential People of 2024 across all 6 categories.
Artists
Dua Lipa
Dev Patel
21 Savage
Alia Bhatt
Jenny Holzer
Colman Domingo
Da’Vine Joy Randolph
Lauren Groff
Jeffrey Wright
Fantasia Barrino
Leslie Odom Jr.
LaToya Ruby Frazier
Alex Edelman
James McBride
Brooks Headley
Icons
Taraji P. Henson
Kylie Minogue
Elliot Page
Burna Boy
Michael J. Fox
Thelma Golden
Sofia Coppola
Jenni Hermoso
Frank Mugisha
Motaz Azaiza
Sakshi Malik
Mark Cuban
Hayao Miyazaki
Suzanne Simard
Julienne Lusenge
Rosanna Flamer-Caldera
Titans
Patrick Mahomes
Satya Nadella
A’ja Wilson
Kelly Ripa
Jack Antonoff
Thasunda Brown Duckett
Donna Langley
Beth Ford
Wang Chuanfu
Kelley Robinson
Chizuko Ueno
Jesper Brodin
Larry Ellison
Joanne Crevoiserat
Max Verstappen
Leaders
Yulia Navalnaya
Narges Mohammadi
Donald Tusk
William Lai
Greg Abbott
Marina Silva
William Burns
E. Jean Carroll
Rena Lee
Javier Milei
Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos
Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani
Elise Stefanik
Diana Salazar Méndez
Jack Smith
Rachel Goldberg-Polin
Ajay Banga
Gavin Newsom
William Ruto
Giorgia Meloni
Li Qiang
Jigar Shah
Lauren Blauvelt
Andriy Yermak
Innovators
Jensen Huang
Maya Rudolph
Shawn Fain
Siya Kolisi
Akiko Iwasaki
Ynon Kreiz
Tory Burch
Rachel Hardeman
Katsuhiko Hayashi
Dominique Crenn
Dave Ricks
Connie Walker
Julie Sweet
Jonathan Anderson
Marina Tabassum
Pioneers
America Ferrera
Lesley Lokko
Ophelia Dahl
Kennedy Odede
Yoshua Bengio
By Geoffrey Hinton
Asma Khan
Kelly Sawyer Patricof and Norah Weinstein
Priyamvada Natarajan
Joel Habener, Svetlana Mojsov, and Dan Drucker
Sam Tsemberis
Sharon Lavigne
Stuart Orkin