Fela Kuti: Expensive Sh*t [KNITTING FACTORY]

Why you'll love it

This Knitting Factory reissue comes with a download card and puts one long, hypnotic track on each side, the way Fela laid it out in 1975. "Water No Get Enemy" is one of his best-loved songs, and in 2026 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

This edition

• Download card included
• Stereo mix

About the album

Most people turn a run-in with the police into a grudge. Fela Kuti turned his into an album. By the mid-1970s the bandleader was the biggest musical force in Nigeria, running the Kalakuta Republic commune and the Afrika Shrine club in Lagos, and the authorities raided him often enough that he could set the experience to a backbeat.

Expensive Sh*t is classic Afrobeat: Fela on saxophones, keyboards and vocals, Africa 70 locking into long, interlocking grooves, horns punching holes in the rhythm and Tony Allen's drumming driving the whole machine. The title track is sly and swaggering, while "Water No Get Enemy" is warmer and more reflective, a slow-burning call-and-response built on a gorgeous horn line. Fela sang in Pidgin English so audiences all over Africa could follow along, and he arranged every part himself, producing the sessions too.

Since his death in 1997 his son Femi has overseen the reissues, and the influence runs from Talking Heads to Atoms for Peace. Arranging and producing every part himself also kept the list of people to argue with pleasingly short.

Also at Kops: more Fela Kuti on vinyl · browse World

Tracklist

Listen

On Knitting Factory / Kalakuta Sunrise (cat# KFR2015-1), a reissue of the 1975 album.