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Seun Kuti & Egypt 80

From Nigeria

The Afrobeat prince who would be king…

It's 1997. Your father, an icon both home and abroad, has just died, leaving the family business in your lap. You are just 15. This is the situation the teenage Seun Kuti suddenly found himself in when his dad, the legendary Fela, passed on at the age of 59, with Kuti Jr inheriting the potentially onerous task of fronting his father's band Egypt 80. As their name suggests, this is an outfit that had been playing supercharged, politically edged Afrobeat since before new-born Seun was even born. He's certainly a dead ringer for Fela, sharing the same wiry figure as well as the compulsion to say what needs to be said. He once took a sabbatical to try other music, but soon returned to the fold. "I didn't want to be continually compared to my dad," he told The Guardian. "Then I realised that was the coward's way out. I could be a really good Afrobeat star in my own right." And that he is.

(Biography written by Nige Tassell 2013)
(Photograph by Martin Meissonnier)

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