After the past year nobody wants to hear the word “unprecedented” ever again, so this father-son joint release is better called an unusual venture – not really a double album so much as two separate records packaged together in the name of funk. The son and grandson of legendary Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, Femi and Made decided to release their new albums at the same time, in a move that wasn’t inspired by Eugene and Dan Levy.
Legacy+ comprises Femi’s eleventh record Stop the Hate and Made’s debut For(e)ward, the first a mature-sounding Afrobeat offering, the second more musically adventurous, but both sharing the DNA of Fela Kuti’s hypnotic grooves and raw social conscience.
The musical legacy runs deep in the Kuti family. Denied any traditional teaching by his father, Femi learnt music on the job, playing saxophone in Fela’s band. By contrast, Femi allowed his son Made a formal musical education in London (where Fela had also studied) and enlisted him for his band Positive Force, bringing a third generation into the musical tradition immortalised at The Shrine in Lagos (the venue created by Fela in the ‘70s and now managed by Femi).
