
afrobeat · 1981
Black President
Fela Anikulapo Kuti
Fela turns the multinational and the military junta into named targets, spelling out that I.T.T. stands for International Thief Thief over a groove that never lets the accusation rest.
"Sorrow Tears and Blood" builds its horror slowly, the phrase repeating until police terror sounds like weather — a direct answer to the soldiers who burned his Kalakuta compound and threw his mother from a window. Where a protest song might shout and stop, Fela lets the tenor sax and call-and-response run past the ten-minute mark, so the argument becomes something you live inside rather than nod along to. "Colonial Mentality" then turns the lens on Nigerians themselves, mocking the impulse to ape the departed British. By the end the beat has outlasted every insult it carries, which is exactly the point: the man could be jailed, but the pocket-piano vamp keeps going.