Seun Kuti & Egypt 80: Heavier Yet Lays The Crownless Head

Seun Kuti is a chip off the old block: inheriting his father Fela Kuti's band Egypt 80, pushing at the edges of but staying more or less within Afrobeat's classic instrumental paradigm, unconditionally championing all oppressed and marginalized people, and, not least, enjoying blunts the size of baseball bats.

One place where Seun has pushed at the edges is in his choice of co-producers. From Africa With Fury: Rise (Knitting Factory, 2011), for instance, was co-produced with Brian Eno. A Long Way To The Beginning (Knitting Factory, 2014) was co-produced with Robert Glasper. Seun's 2024 album, Heavier Yet Lays The Crownless Head (Record Kicks), is co-produced with beyond-category rock and funk master Lenny Kravitz and Sodi Marciszewer, who produced a handful of Fela's albums including his final studio session Underground System (Kalakuta Records, 1992), which was Fela's most conceptually daring latter-day release.

The combination of Kravitz and Marciszewer works very well. Kravitz adds critical masses of rock and funk to the Afrobeat base, while Marciszewer keeps the gestalt firmly in the tradition. Attributing opinions to people who have passed is a fool's errand, but one feels Fela would have approved of the duo's approach (although perhaps not of the auto-generated repeat-a-beat earworm inserted periodically in opening track "T.O.P."). The music is wild, raw, out there and energizing, and all but one track, "Love & Revolution," which is a tribute to Seun's wife, Yetunde Anikulapo Kuti, have lyrics addressing human rights, justice and personal liberation. Guest artists Damian 'Jr. Gong' Marley and the perfectly named Zambian female rapper Sampa The Great respectively enliven "Dey" and "Emi Aluta" ("aluta" means struggle).

It is important not to take Seun's political activism for granted. Children do not automatically follow in the footsteps of their parents. But Seun, a natural-born rebel—like his siblings Yeni and Femi—has stuck his neck out big time whenever the need has arisen. For instance, in 2014, the Nigerian government passed a law criminalizing homosexual activity, with punishments including fourteen-year jail sentences and, in those states voting in favor of sharia law, death by stoning. Also criminalized, "advocacy" of gay rights. The day the law passed, Seun issued a statement that read: "I do not support the anti-gay law and contrary to what people think, if my father was alive, he would not have supported the law either. I know him better than all the people saying otherwise. In our house in Kalakuta, there were gay people living there." More recently, Seun has revived Movement Of The People (M.O.P.), the political party his father founded when running for president.

Stay tuned. There may be light yet at the end of the tunnel.