RFI Musique - - Album review

Album review

Femi Kuti

Africa for Africa

Paris

09/12/2010 -

Two years after his album Day by Day, Femi Kuti is back with Africa for Africa, recorded in the legendary Decca studio in Lagos. True to the spirit of his father, the son of Fela has produced an incandescent disc that burns with its own flames of aggression, enthusiasm and belief in the future.

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Following Day by Day (2008), Femi Kuti, son of Fela Kuti, the soothsaying Nigerian who created afrobeat, is back with a new album whose title speaks volumes, Africa for Africa. Unlike his previous offering, recorded in Paris, the new opus was concocted in Lagos in the Decca studios where his father recorded some of his own hot texts and where he himself started out. The mythical spot, haunted by spirits and masterpieces, is now an antiquated den littered with broken machines, old equipment and subject to electricity cuts – making the creation all the more urgent.

“It was madness, and that’s what we wanted!” exclaims Femi. All of the Nigerian capital’s unbridled energy shines out of this album, like the singer’s inextinguishable anger openly accusing African politicians, the West, the establishment, and more. The red-hot bullets fly backed by orchestral power, roaring brass, excited keyboard work and gratifying groove.

With its loud, unpolished sound like an uncut diamond, the album serves heavy helpings of decibels and incandescent flames, as if spewing out the singer’s visceral hatred for the system. Corrosive stuff that makes you shake your fist as much as wiggle your bum! With its chanting vocals, Africa for Africa comes across like a militant prayer insistently calling for better days. With this latest album, the ever-rebellious Femi is treading in his father’s footsteps more than ever before: a revolution that never runs out of steam, and a keen reminder that “beat” means both pulse and thrash.