Kuti Tuesdays: Mike Love - Nigerian Gangster (2008)

Mike Love is a DJ from Chicago. Jay-Z is a rapper from New York. Fela Kuti is the founder and purveyor of an entire genre of Nigerian-African music, Afrobeat. Separated, one is pretty unknown and two are considered at the top of given arts. United? If I'm being honest, I listen to this version of the album more than American Gangster, but that's not exactly why I chose to put this up today. The higher ups here at Radio Retaliation were hoping to get into Fela Kuti, and I offered to make Tuesday Kuti Tuesdays in honor of the legendary musician. Fucking fantastic pun on Ruby Tuesday's aside, while his music is often intensely political I figured first introducing his music as some great beats underneath some great rapping would be the right way for a hip-hop blog to warm up to his music. Over the next few weeks I'll be putting out plenty of stuff from both Fela and his extended family, who continued his legacy after he died. We'll be starting with Expensive Shit, mostly because it's both poignant and hilarious, but as an additional primer here is a great example of just how rhythmic and forward thinking Kuti's output was. Many of these tracks fit right in with contemporary samples: you'll probably recognize quite a few, and I'll try to point out which tracks from this release are from which album when the time comes.

1	Intro		2:45
2	Pray		3:56
3	American Dreamin'		4:56
4	Hello Brooklyn 2.0 (feat. Lil Wayne)		4:06
5	No Hook		2:48
6	Roc Boys (And the Winner Is...)		4:29
7	Sweet		3:38
8	I Know (feat. Pharrell Williams)		3:38
9	Party Life		4:32
10	Ignorant Shit (feat. Beanie Sigel)		3:54
11	Say Hello		5:27
12	Success (feat. Nas)		4:04
13	Falling (feat. Bilal)		3:31
14	Blue Magic		4:05
15	American Gangster		3:08

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