Chaos

On first play of this sparkling debut album from Nigerian 12-piece Lagos Thugs, it’s hard to believe you’re not listening to Fela Kuti. The voice, the tone, the rhythms, the lyrics: it could almost be Nigeria’s ‘Black President’ himself, reincarnated to resume his task of calling out corruption and injustice — a fearless act in a country where doing so could cost you your liberty or your life. Fela has, of course, been gone since 1997, but his baton has been taken up, musically and metaphorically, by frontman, singer & saxophonist Adetunji Adeyemi who hails from Africa’s most populous city. Dispelling any doubts about the band’s inspiration and the severity of the task they’ve inherited, the opening track, ‘Kalakuta President’, with its immense trumpet solo, is indeed a paean to Olufela Olusegun Oludotun ‘Fela’ Ransome-Kuti, the king of Afrobeat whose own mother paid the ultimate price for her son’s musical outspokenness. She died as a result of injuries after being thrown from the second-floor of Fela’s nightclub and political commune, the Afrika Shrine, after it was raided by armed soldiers incensed at his mocking of them on his 1976 album Zombie.

Since commanding a weekly residence at popular Lagos nightspot, the Bature Brewery, after a live appearance there in January 2021, Lagos Thugs have appeared at Nigerian jazz festivals and on MTV Africa. They have also acted as support for Fela’s son, Seun Kuti, including at his concerts staged in his father’s former nightclub, which has been rebuilt and named the New Afrika Shrine – in spite of challenges by Nigerian authorities – by Seun’s siblings, Yeni and Femi.

Singing, as Fela did, in Pidgin, the English dialect used as a lingua franca throughout Nigeria, Lagos Thugs have garnered critical acclaim for their potent mix of Afrobeat, jazz, dub and traditional drumming from Cuba and West Africa — often heard in Congolese soukous music.

Their success has hardly been hindered, either, by praise from Fela’s trumpeter, Muyiwa Kunnuji, who has also played with Seun, as well as with Tony Allen. Kunnuji says Lagos Thugs are “playing exactly as we did. The same energy! They’re playing proper Afrobeat.”

This album has been co-produced by Paris-based DJ Ness Afro who has endowed it with a warm, 1970s analogue sound, reminiscent of Afrobeat’s golden age. It’s hard to find a favourite among the four, equally impressive, tracks. However, ‘Wetin I See’ — featuring Kiala Nzavotunga, the Angolan-Congolese guitarist who played with Fela’s Egypt 80 — carries the banner high, both in song and sentiment. It’s a soulful and reflective lament, in the style that Fela personified five decades ago, on how Africa, a continent unrivalled for its natural and human resources, still suffers at the hands of its political leaders.