Burna Boy evens his performance from a year before, when he placed second on the 2022 annual-end rankings, by finishing first on Billboard’s 2023 annual-end U.S. Afrobeats Musicians chart. The global superstar tops the weekly U.S. Afrobeat tracks chart, which ranks the top 50 Afrobeats tracks using a system that combines U.S. sales and stream activity, with 26 leading entries throughout the 2023 charts year (Nov. 19, 2022 – October 21, 2023) to secure the top spot.
Examining Burna Boy’s year of points of interest the smash song “Last Last,” which topped U.S. African beats Songs for a period of eight weeks in July and August of 2022, continued to rank highly even after the Nigerian superstar left the summit.
In 2023, six more tracks made it into the top 10: “Big 7” (No. 5), “Cheat on Me” (No. 7), “City Boys” (No. 2), “Sittin’ on Top of the World” (No. 4), and “Talibans II” (No. 3) featuring Byron Messina. These tracks were also included in the soundtrack release for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
The final two songs on the list, “Sittin’ on the top of the World” and “Talibans II,” greatly boosted Burna Boy’s exposure in the United States market due to their widespread radio play in the context of the R&B/hip-hop genre’s increasing embrace of Afrobeats music. While the latter has soared as high as No. 11, the previous hit has only gotten as far as No. 4 on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart thus far.
Interestingly, as of November of 2023, both songs are still rising, highlighting Burna Boy’s place among the genre’s best hitmakers. Apart from the current hits, “Last Last” marked a significant turning point for Burna Boy; it went from being his first top 25 success on the radio list to much more, reaching No. 1 in the month of October 2022.
