Damon Albarn is already many things, including being the frontman and singer for Blur, the Gorillaz, and the officially unnamed supergroup behind The Good, The Bad, & The Queen. Now, he can add another interesting title to his résumé: According to the BBC, the African nation of Mali has now named him a “local king” in honor of his continued support of the country’s musical culture. In 2002, Albarn released Mali Music, an album recorded in Mali that featured appearances from Malian musicians, and in 2013 he led a group of artists (including Brian Eno and Nick Zinner from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs) to Mali where they collaborated with more Malian musicians on an album called Maison Des Jeunes. Also, following the terrorist attack on Mali’s Radisson Blu hotel in November, Albarn ignored a “state of emergency” warning to play at the country’s Festival Acoustik Bamako.
Albarn’s new title almost certainly doesn’t grant him any special powers, but a music school in Mali did name a classroom after him. That’s pretty cool.