Fela Kuti - Expensive Shit - Water No Get Enemy - Afro Beat - Sealed LP + Pic Insert

Fela - Expensive Shit


Label: Knitting Factory Records
Cat#: KFR2015-1
Format: Vinyl, 180 Grm LP, Album, Reissue
has pic inner sleeve

2023 Repress
Country: US
1975
ReReleased: 2014
Genre: Jazz, Funk / Soul, Folk, World, & Country
Style: Afrobeat, Funk


Tracklist

A Expensive Shit 13:14

B Water No Get Enemy 11:06



For He Miss Road and Expensive Shit, Fela still carried his original last name--Ransome-Kuti (which changed to his more radical moniker Anikulapo-Kuti later), but he had grown since his early 1970s albums in two important ways. First, Fela had been radicalized beyond his introduction to U.S.-style Black Power and had been framed by Nigerian authorities, who placed marijuana in his possession.

He promptly ate the dope, after which authorities arrested him and waited for him to defecate so they could test the dung for drugs. Not a sexy scheme, and not even a workable scheme, but it did give Fela fodder--specifically the tune (and album title) "Expensive Shit." His second advance came in the form of using the studio as a virtual instrument, one that makes He Miss Road a trippy, stuttery, reverb-laden intersection of lean Afro-beat and '70s astro-funk.


It has the earmarks of radicalized urban musical poetry without all the pretensions of strict meter or the pop market.



Fela Kuti - Expensive Shit

"Expensive Shit" album gives Fela plenty of room to detail and decry official devilry. In this case, he was detained by police in order to produce a "sample" they could then test for hemp. According to Fela, a renowned hemp smoker, the sample came back clean. In the fashion of all his mid-70s recordings, the title tune is uptempo and utilizes a choppy James Brown-ish rhythm guitar riff as an introduction and driving force (Fela's use of funk guitar patterns, by the way, generally fills the role taken traditionally by percussion in African music, setting up a basic pattern around which the rest of the composition is arranged.)


His lyrics reflect not only detestation of the regime but also a kind of incensed pragmatism - detaining a musician in such a way is ludicrous, Fela basically says, even if does have THC in his blood. Where Side A of the original album is tense with its polyrhythms,

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/o1FJLdda6eI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


Fela Kuti - Water No Get Enemy

Side B represents the cleansing, and is titled "Water Get No Enemy." Its sound is lilting and cool

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/IQBC5URoF0s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>