Fela Ransome Kuti & Africa 70 - Expensive Shit [ Vinyl LP ]

Just look at this album cover. Perhaps your eye first registers the barb wire, cut across horizontally in several lines across the frame of the image or maybe it’s the beautiful black women half-naked with breasts bared. To me, the thing to notice is THEIR SMILES. Those big beaming smiles of transcendence that complement the fists raised in the air. Those smiles collectively are a symbol that there is a freedom nobody can take away from you, that freedom first comes from within, and the strength to overcome oppression first comes from within. If you possess these things nobody and nothing can keep you down. At this time, Fela Kuti, along with his bandmates and his family, lived in a compound in Nigeria where he also had a recording studio, that he declared the Kalakuta Republic. The police loved to mess with him because of his anti-imperialist, anti-military views and would often raid the place. The story behind this particular record is pretty strange: In 1974, the police planted a j