Fela Kuti:
The Best Best of Fela Kuti (MCA)

Packing just 13 tunes into a hefty 160-minute double, this best-of celebrating Nigeria's dead-of-AIDS Afrobeat evangelist wouldn't seem the salve for anyone's Fela problem. But consider the judicious edits and the comparatively Spartan 12-minute average track length you'll find here a gift. Nowhere else will you find Fela's grooves so unceasingly sharp, his riffs so manifold, his furious bursts of hornsmanship so exhilarating. I'd even argue he's never sounded more, well, African. His compulsion toward meandering jam-band spaceouts clipped, trimmed and hemmed for posterity, the propulsive polyrhythms of his legendarily large backing bands dig in and never have the time or space to let go. Acolytes might argue that sounds like Fela tamed. To agnostics, it will sound more like Fela revealed.
Rating: 9

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