The man who in 2019 knew well enough to declare himself the African Giant may not have needed a Mick Jagger collaboration to certify his rock-star bona fides, but with his eighth studio album, No Sign of Weakness, that is what Burna Boy saw fit to deliver. “Shout-out to Naomi Campbell,” the Nigerian-born superstar tells Apple Music’s Ebro Darden. “It was literally her idea. She was like, ‘You and Mick Jagger would be so legendary.’ And she pressed about it for so long.” The song is called “Empty Chairs” and is a unique classic-rock/Afrobeats hybrid—just one of a wealth of disparate vibes Burna explores across No Sign of Weakness, an album whose title implies a plan for continued dominance while asserting a pronounced lack of fear in his musical practice. “I was trying to make something that I haven’t made before,” Burna says. “In a sense that I’m trying to do the opposite of everything I’ve ever done—in a good way. I just feel like right now, I’m big enough to do it. I’m big enough to enjoy it now and just do everything that I would want to listen to, if it wasn’t me.” But it is him who fans the world over have been adding to playlists, requesting in DJ sets, and buying tickets to see season after season since at least 2018’s “Ye” took the Afrobeats world by storm. His practice has expanded with every release since, and on No Sign of Weakness we get dalliances with hip-hop (“No Sign of Weakness”), country (“Change Your Mind”), house (“Kabiyesi”), baile funk (“TaTaTa”), lovers rock (“Sweet Love”), and R&B (“Come Gimme”), complemented by linkups with Travis Scott, Stromae, and Shaboozey, an artist Burna actually feels a tribal connection to. “So, here’s the thing: I didn’t know he was actually Nigerian,” Burna says, “Before he came, they would tell me, ‘Hey, you know this guy’s Nigerian, right?’ But when [people] say someone is Nigerian, it’s like they probably have one drop of Nigerian blood somewhere. With Shaboozey, his name is Chibueze, and I’m speaking pidgin, and he understands that.” You’d not need to be kin to the singer and MC to understand the Burna Boy lifestyle, specifically in regard to reaping the financial benefits of his genius (“Bundle by Bundle”), his undying love for the ganja leaf (“28 grams”), or even his amusement at making local tabloids (“Dem Dey”). He’s happy to tell you all about it—including how he deals with it all—as he does on album mission statement “No Panic.” “Basically, I’m saying, every day I’ve done all this, but I don’t panic—I won’t panic,” he says. “It’s some shit that they say in the streets in Nigeria as well. It’s like, ‘Dem go whine you, but no panic.’ It means they’ll play with you, but don’t panic.”