NEW YORK >> Until recently, Burna Boy didn’t have a phone.

Owning arguably the most essential item in the internet age simply didn’t interest him. His sister called it an act of self-preservation lasting nearly three years, making him nearly impossible to reach for those outside his inner circle.

“He just got a phone number in the past year,” says his sister, Ronami Ogulu. “He didn’t even have WhatsApp.”

In early July, however, Burna Boy arrived with his very own iPhone at Sei Less, a glitzy Asian fusion restaurant in Midtown Manhattan that’s popular with rappers, athletes and even the mayor of New York. Adorning the walls of the downstairs “emerald room” were at least 100 bottles of Don Julio 1942 — the same liquor that was in the glass in front of him, chilled by one jumbo-sized ice cube.

It’s one of several birthday parties for the man born Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu, who turned 32 less than a week before our conversation. Camouflaged into a couch was a gift bag from his label, Atlantic Records, which contained an action figure of Wu-Tang Clan pioneer RZA and yet another bottle of 1942. In the hours before his arrival, his team scrambled to put the celebration in place, fast-tracking lobster spring rolls, lychee martinis, chicken dishes and fried rice from the kitchen to the private room. “Tell them Obama’s in the house,” Ronami quipped to the waiter.

Truthfully, the former president’s heart might have skipped a beat in Burna Boy’s presence. The self-anointed “African Giant” has landed on five of Barack Obama’s biannual playlists, including the three most recent editions — twice in 2022 for his breakup-song-slash-party-starter “Last Last,” and this summer with “Sittin’ on Top of the World,” which borrows the ’90s New York bounce of Brandy’s “Top of the World” and features 21 Savage.

Burna Boy’s music pulls from all corners of the diaspora, merging afrobeats with hip-hop, reggae and R&B while singing in a blend of languages to create a sound he calls afrofusion. But the Nigerian superstar’s all-encompassing sound also falls in line with his larger message: to amplify Pan-Africanism and unify Black people around the world through the rhythms.

“They’ve successfully broken us apart, to where many of us don’t even want to identify with each other,” he tells me at Sei Less. “The primary objective for our people should be unity, and to build a bridge between us that can never close or break. With the music, I try to play my little part in trying to do that.”