In this episode of My African Bookshelf, we place Expensive Shit, the 1975 album by Fela Anikulapo Kuti & Africa ’70, on the shelf and slow down with it—not simply as music, but as political text, cultural archive, and historical evidence.
The episode begins with the now-famous incident that inspired the album: a police raid, an accusation of cannabis possession, and the state’s obsessive attempt to use Fela’s own body as evidence against him. What follows is not merely a retelling of a scandal, but an examination of how power operates—through surveillance, humiliation, and control of the body—and how Fela responds by turning that moment into sound, rhythm, and public laughter.
We move through the album’s two long tracks, “Expensive Shit” and “Water No Get Enemy,” paying attention to how Afrobeat’s extended grooves, call-and-response structure, and repetition function as more than musical choices. They become tools of political education—ways of drawing listeners into a shared rhythm before delivering critique. Humor, proverb, and storytelling emerge not as distractions from resistance, but as central strategies within it.
From there, the episode looks beneath the surface. We explore how the album reframes state power by exposing its pettiness and desperation, how laughter becomes a weapon, and how time itself—stretching a song over ten or twelve minutes—creates space for reflection, absorption, and collective understanding. “Water No Get Enemy,” grounded in Yoruba philosophy, offers a quieter counterpoint: a meditation on forces that cannot be owned, defeated, or permanently controlled.
Finally, the episode places Expensive Shit in conversation with African folktales, modern protest art, and contemporary struggles around surveillance, authority, and freedom. The album is treated as part of a longer lineage—from trickster stories to today’s musicians, filmmakers, and storytellers—who continue to name what is happening and refuse silence.
This is not a conventional album review. It is an invitation to listen closely, to hear music as evidence, and to ask what it means when rhythm, humor, and pain sit side by side.
As always, the episode ends not with answers, but with questions—about power, resistance, and the stories we choose to tell about ourselves.
My African Bookshelf is an ANSRd Labs podcast.
