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Outspoken Afrobeat musician, Seun Kuti has slammed artistes who use Fela as an excuse to be promiscuous.
Kuti made this known during a recent Instagram Live chat with record label boss, Ubi Franklin.
When asked about people who claimed Fela inspired them, Seun said:”I think a lot of them grew up in Christian and Muslim homes, and use Fela as an excuse to smoke and chase girls”, he said.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBTDMQMpCXG/
He also stated that the aspect of being rude to elders as displayed by the generation today was not picked up from Fela.
Seun also wondered why artistes who attribute certain behaviour of theirs to Fela are never seen confronting oppressors in government like his father did.
TheNewsGuru recalls that Seun had berated artistes who mention Fela as their mentor in an interview.
According to him:” I believe that true love must come with knowledge. To love something, you have to know it. That is why people don’t marry strangers. Some people use Fela as an excuse to be irresponsible and I speak out against it because I don’t like it. Fela did not keep billions in the bank. At any point in time, he had about 300 people staying in his house and another 500 living in the shrine, and he paid salaries and daily allowances to them all.
“All the money Fela had went back to the people; he didn’t keep it to himself. Fela’s band was 70-men strong. He didn’t need 70 people to play in his band but he just wanted them to have a means of livelihood. He was a man who put his money where his mouth was. He was benevolent to everybody around him but now, ‘they’ have destroyed the name– people just destroyed what Fela means. In the neighbourhood where the shrine was formerly located, Fela’s boys were the ones protecting the people from hooligans from other areas such as Yaba, Lagos Island, Somolu, Marina, Bariga and others.
“As a matter of fact, that is how the term, ‘area boy’ became a thing, and today, look at what we have turned area boys into. Area boys were supposed to protect our communities. Fela found them basically out of his socialist brand that was assisting and protecting the community from abuse. Now, they are the ones abusing the community. Fela also fought against drug dealers”