Leeroy Presents: Fela is the Future

A French hip-hop and beatboxing hero from the early 2000s, Leeroy is at the controls here as curator and producer of this album. His mission is ambitious and righteous: to ensure Fela Kuti's legacy by providing new interpretations of his most stirring anthems and scathing lyrics. Leeroy spent 20 days in Lagos recording elements of the tunes with artists including members of Egypt 80 (Fela's final band), Fela's sons Femi and Seun Kuti and newer artists such as Féfé, Nneka, Nakhane and Wura Samba.

He took the results back to his studio in France and that's where the project founders, because he's turned the result into a slick retro Afropop mix, dominated by mediocre rhythms and samples that were ubiquitous two decades ago. So the music becomes a diluted, bland version of the past. Fela's ‘Zombie’ anthem somehow still emerges intriguingly unscathed, along with one or two other moments, but with fresher Afrocentric musical ideas, something powerful might have happened. It's worth checking out the totally stunning album cover, however, in which the future clearly does indeed belong to the Black President. It's a vibrant masterpiece by Lemi Ghariokwu, incendiary artist of Fela albums for decades.