A Tribute to Fela Kuti: Felatastic

by G-DO & Xception

A Tribute to Fela Kuti: Felatastic cover art
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03:57
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03:27
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03:47
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04:14
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04:07
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03:14
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03:57
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04:33
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about

Press Release ‘G-DO & Xception –A Tribute to Fela Kuti: Felatastic’ (Goal! Records)

On 22 April 2011, Chicago rapper Xception and Amsterdam producer G-DO will release their new album ‘Felatastic: A Tribute to Fela Kuti’ on Goal Records. As the title suggests, this album is a tribute to Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the legendary Nigerian musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, and human rights activist. What started out as one song in the spirit of Fela Kuti for the new G-DO & Xception album ‘Sankofa’ (to be released summer 2011), soon turned into a full ten song-tribute album. The bridge between G-DO & Xception and Fela Kuti had been established a long time ago, so making this tribute album was a spontaneous process as they found themselves possessed by the ‘spirit of the shrine.’

The first single ‘Followers’ and accompanying B-side ‘We Love Music’ are now available for free download and listening at www.goalmusicgroup.com or g-doxception.bandcamp.com. The follow up single ‘The Revolutionist’ has also just been released and is available for free download.

‘Felatastic: A Tribute to Fela Kuti’ is the second album from G-DO & Xception, following their critically acclaimed debut album Mood of the Music, released on 26 July 2010 on Goal Records. Although their debut album went largely unnoticed by mainstream media, Mood of the Music was praised by critics, calling it:

“Most definitely one of the nicest indie albums I’ve heard so far this year” (hiphopruckus.com).

“…Smooth instrumentals, intelligent lyricism, and great quality music” (fab4music.com).

“Really a great album from top to bottom, all the beats are great, the lyrics and flow is also top notch. I’m really amazed this is their first release, this really has the top quality of something more mature” (unclecritic.com).

Xception’s rhyming combines a Chicago flavor with introspective lyrics and clever wordplay, while G-DO creates musical landscapes that are a combination of funky, jazzy sounds combined with hard-hitting drums and live instrumentation.

For more information, or to set up an interview, please contact gdoandxception@gmail.com. To stay up to date on new developments and receive more free music, make sure to ‘like’ G-DO & Xception on Facebook, follow on twitter @gdoandxception and regularly visit the website www.goalmusicgroup.com.

credits

released 22 April 2011

tags

tags: hip hop/rap afrobeat fela kuti felatastic g-do g-do & xception goal music group goal records hip hop hip-hop rap & hip-hop rap alternative soulful xception Trujillo

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Track Name: Outline
Outline
By Xception

I reminisce on January ‘09/ My stereo and a rhyme wishing/ For the rhythm like a miracle in the Shrine/ Then there it go the design had to follow the signs cus/ That buck that bought a bottle did strike the lotto/ Met G-DO then we brought ya’ll the arrangement changed it/ Raised it, up another level to amazing gave ya/ Mood of the Music saved ya/ With something more in store cooking up major/ Classic material favors/ Free for the people and the ages Sankofa/ On its way to your blogs and your pages/ But good gracious this is what fait is/ Made one song and it turned into greatness/ Felatastic burn this play this/ Fela’s magic a master of making/ Music for the movement, moving, shaking/ This is just a way of giving thanks and praises/ G-DO and Xception a gift for your playlist/ Anikulapo, Felatastic
Track Name: Followers
Followers
By Xception

The news told me today every Arab is a terrorist/ Trying to put a scare in Americans and/ Everywhere in the air big brother stare at us aware of us/ Prepared with brigadiers there to bury us and/ The enemy of the state is any free will to stay/ Wherever people engaged in breaking barriers and/ The tendency to degrade every candidate/ For the welfare of the state is something meritous and/ Co-conspirators media and fear in us/ Drive us from our boredom but we don’t know where they steering us/ Telling us to listen without hearing us/ Domesticated citizens prisoners/ Living in a system with belligerents enlisted to solicit us/ For taxes, fractions, soldiers, fighting the evil axis/ But practice shows us we are the evil actions/ Perhaps its owed us being we benefactors/ Of whips cracked over bleeding into the cracks/ Of the soil that sowed us poison/ Waiting to corrode your choices, voices/ With a song of sorrow, it’s that follow follow

No! Not another conspiracy theory where we/ Clearly feel inferior we misled and misleading/ Yo! It’s infrared but you read it like it was said and repeated/ They teach it preach it we eat it and then we follow follow

Let me make it clear make it evident/ I’m here for a second man, but I wanna be president/ This world is my heaven and my hell and my reverend/ My shell and residence for now and forever since/ Forever after and after the evidence/ The rapture I’m pestilence I’m right here/ Light years per minute I’m right here/ And simultaneously I’m right there it’s quite clear you get it?/ I’m bumping in your ears bumping into gimmicks/ With something for your limits like Popeye, spinach/ Tinted with a pinch of back when it was intended to leave a dent/ Tapped in creeping beneath and leaving hints/ So take one and follow my lead/ Xception to the rules my motto my creed/ My model my seed so borrow and breed/ Tomorrow will be a new day. never follow

No! Not another conspiracy theory where we/ Clearly feel inferior we misled and misleading/ Yo! It’s infrared but you read it like it was said and repeated/ They teach it preach it we eat it and then we follow follow
Track Name: The Revolutionist
The Revolutionist

This for freedom fighters, teachers and freedom writers/ Its for that light inside us, incite a riot like it’s/ 88 in Riker’s, they wave away our rights cus/ The way they play we only worth our weight in blood and diapers/ Catching that shit and piss they like to throw at strikers/ And put you on a list for being grown and righteous/ For understanding that this life is priceless/ Reprimanded at your home and now your wife is lifeless, nothing/ Short of a crisis, sort of like a sport/ Where polices got a license to shoot and kill the poor, go/ Summon Isis, tell her its a war/ The dark and brightest, they fighting to control the pure/ Dream biters with gingivitis in they pores/ We smelled em coming and then united in the scores/ Now, look at em running, headed for the doors, yeah/ We busy drumming and banging on the floors/ From Bangalore Bangladesh and other shores/ The Atlantic and the Indian Pacific and Caribbean/ The civil disobedience the main ingredient/ For cooking up a cure, looking up and sure/ A smile looking down from the clouds and on the ground/ In every part of town if you looking around it’s us!/ Trust! The people’s power in they palms/ Be alarmed cus we armed and moving on

Time’s of the essence, soon to find out/ Check your Timexes, see the time is now/ Prime segments to climb like it’s out of style/ Grind reckless to shine like we out of clouds/ Breaking barriers to areas we never seen/ Awake and wary of the various and clever schemes/ To get your pockets, your confidence, and kill your dreams/ Make you push the machine/ Out of your way, out of your stream, over the edge/ Out of the play, off of your team, holding your head/ On your own two shoulders and neck showing the rest/ What a god look like, glow, knowing the flesh can/ Go, lo and behold what’s left man/ Perfection that’s what we nest in/ When we know the truth man that’s when the stress end/ So I’m calling you to the frontlines like Sam is/ Fight for your mind, crunch time the hand is/ Ticking down on the clock, know what your plan is/ Start picking them locks and overstand this/ Quick, picture the plot, see your way out the pot/ The water bubbling it’s troubling to watch/ But I hopped in so we could jump out/ Seen where the block been, but what we want now/ Is reaching for the top and freeing our love out – gone!
Track Name: Out of the Shade
Out of the Shade

It’s been a long time coming, but I showed up/ Showing up, old time runners with they flows stuck/ My flow’s stuck, the whole time running up rewind in your memory/ Like summertime rhymes in the winter breeze/ Centuries of sentiments sent to me in sentences and similes/ Essentially I’m sent to be the sentiency to see the seas saying…

Now that I’m here, there’s finally a voice speaking freely/ Free of hyperbole and free to fly purposely/ Into the sky first to see what Earth could be/ Reversed and free of work immersed in hurting every person we saying…

So many days coming and gone without a trace/ So many ways we can see to make change/ Today we stay away from being swayed into the maze [we out the shade]

Seeing the sunshine in a new light now/ And that’s a whole lot of light for these nights out/ Looking for peace in the poverty/ It’s probably protected by police, but we pop into the property and saying…

Emerging from dirt with scars, but perfect/ Conversing with the gods til we stars and worshipped/ The worse hit, but the mirage is in the hearse with/ The thought of not deserving our birth cus we worth it and saying….
Track Name: Goal
Goal!

If you mistaken bout my location/ Better know I’m from the GO where I’m showcasin’/ Another taste of why I chose the flow vocation/ Not for the dough but to glow where the soul vacant/ Serving bowls of the slow if you below patience/ That fast lane racing got your goals cold and waiting/ Let’s wake em up before they old and they won’t make it/ Ready to fold never grow with no clothes naked/ So here’s a coat that I wrote out of gold equations/ Throw it on the nation’s shoulders to control it’s shaking/ Waking from the nightmare of breaking what you hold sacred/ Throw another blow debating greatness in my own creation/ Showed you long ago but then you swore that it was broke and tainted/ G-DO let you know and chopped up Fela and I’m so elated/ So we so related like we whole and then we separated/ Strayed into the shade and made it back to say hello to haters/ Goodbye to the crook eyes flow is sober dope and rated/ One over the best so I guess to be correct the greatest/ Wonder why I say this press rewind until you hate this/ And you find you still rewinding when you gone and met your makers – later/ Whoa - With them shakers, filling like I’m chilling in Jamaica with my bro/ But no, he locked up in San Quentin cus temptation made him throw/ His life into the system and I miss him like a bow/ Misses boxes after Christmas only option is to wish him/ Peace and profit in the wisdom like I’m doing for you listeners at the show/ Think I’m hearing whispers from the floor or the ceiling and the doors/ The vibrations that I’m feeling reminiscent of the shores we were torn from/ Existing living life within the limits that we born from - warm sun/ Africa – war torn – Africa- mourn poor Africa what happened to/ Black and the, beautiful attraction ta, exactly what’s intact with the/ Fact of the, village raising children to come after the/ Chapters of the elders then prevail so we adapt to the/ Factors in the scale of hell on Earth from Yale to Attica the average of/ 33% walk away when we are the batter up/ I’m mad at us
Don’t matter but/ half of us on back of bus with clappers strapped and gats to bust/ The laughter up when pride erupt and all the pain inside of us/ Coincide with cops and cuffs enough’s enough, But what’s enough/ When promises are made to bluffs/ 40 aches negated for the 8x8s and no trust/ No day light no justice for just us but what’s us/ Every black and brown and white customer of governors/ Disgusted from the dust in the, policies and such and such/ We leaning on a crutch for us when us enough to hush the rush/ Of hot air coming when they not there running on these streets scared/ Something bout ta beat em there they feet aware/ they ready to go they ready to blow heavy is that weight when that levee broke/ Your Chevy nope gotta swim and make it just to steady hope/ Spaghetti ropes thrown to the people’s hands instead of boats/ So we soaked but trying, five years later on broken homes drying/ Yes I’m talking bout New Orleans-Bangalore-and-Lahore-and/ Singapore Santiago Bangkok and Chicago/ Los Angeles and Berlin Tokyo and down to Durban/ Urban and suburban bad nerves and immersed in/ The birthing, of dollars, not babies, no nurses/ No searching, for scholars, just lurking, for purses/ Starting to think the hearses are the taxis but what’s worse is/ I’m right and they filled with persons traversing to promised land/ But I promise man that land is right where we standing/ The deed is in your hand and we owned it since we landed/ So take this understanding and stamp where your plan is/ Your strategy your best move that no one else can know/ Except your family your best crew show em how it go/ Bring em to the field line em up and whistle blows/ When you ready take your best shot you made it it’s a gõl!
Track Name: Extra Strength
Extra Strength

What you having drinks are on me feeling fantastic/ Another day seeing that we wrapped in the fabric and/ Tapped in to magic, making the mood change/ By doing two things, making the groove change/ And making ya move things, you ain’t moved/ Since you was a new thing out looking for cool, now/ Found this underground and found bliss/ Around now you feeling surrounded bound with/ A sound thick reaching into outer limits to sound this/ Horn off to say we warned ya’ll ready to swarm ya’ll/ Ready for the levy and whatever the storm called/ Katrina or Betty they heavy we steady ready to takeover/ Freshen the place up change up the odor/ Hot garbage, I’m bring something colder/ Hot water ammonia so/ Open the window and let the wind blow/ I’m bout to put it down for the ones that’s been broke/ From peeps in Chi-Town to African kinfolk/ We after that info and have to get in so/ Open the doors before we break the whole place down/ It ain’t about the money ain’t about race now/ It’s all about the chase, taking the gates down/ No more of the wait now we know and controlling our fait now/ So, getting it popping with us, pop locking with us/ In your city non-stopping while ya rocking with us/ Ready to take it to the next level turn up the bass/ turn up the treble burn up the pedals while they yearn to debate/ who the best, the only thing that matter is taste and this is fresh/ like broccoli and grilled chicken breast no GMO we/ G-DO & Xception in your stereo free!

Somebody said it was too wild in here/ smh lol in here please!/ Get the fuck out of here you gotta hear/ Nothing but love from inside here We!/ Me, G-DO, and you lead the people to see/ What the people I’ll do when the people are free/ Free of the chains being the change/ No more cheering from the stands we in the game like/ Give me the rock and whatever the clock say/ Don’t sweat it like small stuff/ Get your little draws stuck up in a bunch looking for sympathy/ While we cooking with a symphony and hooking up essentially a classic/ Moment in rhyme moment in time potentially plastered/ On your mind like a memory imagine/ The best thing you ever dreamed and now you have it
Track Name: WWFD
WWFD

A cold night that was riddled in war/ It rained from a trickle to a pour/ Not even a nickel that wasn’t fought for/ cus if it cost more than what you holding/ You holding heat by your waste line/ With no time to waste time hesitate or wait/ Not even if you face time/ Its just a break from the chase/ Sooner or later you back in it/ Trying to start over and build up a stack in it yeah/ Never seeing that your son seeing that/ Reaching for that cheese caught in a trap/ Hanging from trees strange fruit living in magnolia dreams/ Waking up to one hell of a nightmare/ As soon as you open up your eyes its right there/ Put on your Nike airs and hit the block looking to sell a few/ While we stuck and we stumbling I’m wondering what would Fela do

A simple story really, life is very hard/ Full of suffering until the cemetery yard/ I swear we all hustling for the same thing/ Room to breathe, food to eat, then a chance to maybe change things/ Change scenes from take one to take whatever you want/ Clever punks in the streets with guns and empty stomachs/ See you with a house on your neck and they want it/ But what would you expect from a kid with no vision/ A kid with no hope forget he won’t listen/ No joke only smiles at his enemies/ With bad luck like a child of the Kennedys/ It sounds wild but its common as cornbread/ All around town looking down and more sad than ever/ Stuck in a cage one hell of a zoo/ Wonder back in the days what would Fela do

Wish I could deliver a quick fix but there ain’t none/ And its quicker to quit but we aint done/ And we can’t run but so sick of this shit/ Ready to break from the grip of the tricks/ And be on time for my date with Fait/ Cus I’m ready to shine ready to climb and ready to wait/ And ready for whatever coming out of the gates/ On my Fela ready for the fight ready for the great
Track Name: We Love Music
We Love Music

Turn the lights down we bout to heat up/ I got the mic now, forget about it, I got the right crowd/ So turn the beat up and me up insuring the sound/ Is where you feel it vibrating, feel the high waiting/ Then we up, way up, higher than clouds/ Hands in the sky waving, amazing, living in the feeling of now/ Feeling famous, even if I’m still on the couch writing to strangers/ Feeling like I’m building the evidence of love in the present tense/ Above any governments or anger/ And above whatever your color is, whoever your mother is/ Together we gonna get through changes/ Sitting at the top of the precipice, the flock and the shepherd mix/ A shot of benevolence, we anxious-ly/ Await a way to make our way to the front row/ Loving every minute that we in it and want more/ Screaming out!

We love music, real music/ From the blues to jazz ill music/ Hip hop in my heart true blueprint/ Never tear us apart, it’s a movement

The pen and pad might as well be my lifeline for real/ At night time during the worst times my meal/ A verse of lines written to curse time/ And fitted with specific analytics to nurse minds, ill/ Beats G-DO, for all of what that I know/ The homie never sleeps, he go/ To the next level like its written in stars I fit it in bars/ You get in parts and hit the pause in your cars then/ Forgetting you lost, just cruising/ Moving to the beat of the drum that’s in the music/ Moving out your seat to the sun where you can see everyone/ Holding the key to the dumb and just lose it/ Now we all trapped in a good time, clapping in good time/ I’m rapping you dancing and happen to glance in/ The light and see the night of your life having your hands/ To sky while I’m lighting this mic we all stand saying

Chorus – We love music…

Slow up, but don’t stop, bounce with it pronounce wit it/ Yeah sweat another ounce with it/ Breakers I’ll bout with it, ladies making a move/ To sway the wallflowers from the womb breaking the rules/ Haters I’ll lose so they stay away from the rooms where/ The sun and moons are creating a tune that’s there/ Rocking til noon never stop and assume/ That when we drop in it’s Hip Hop and to the clocks we immune

Forever we tied wherever we tired/ If you find a measure then I promise I’ll fill in the lines/ If you under weather then I’m with you against the tides/ Must be in our feathers birds in a flock flying together/ And whatever the odds of us being in charge are/ We bout to beat em like its not even hard bars/ Over these beats come complete free of charge cus/ Music and me share the beat of one heart love
Track Name: Confusion Everywhere
Confusion Everywhere

A young lady throwing up in class/ A son at home sixteen growing up too fast on her own/ A seed sewn growing in her tummy/ Trying to study math but she too damn hungry/ Searching the streets for a new man and money but coming up short/ So she tried a new sport running in back seats with dummies/ Code name walking the back streets is honey/ She used to be as sweet as the sunshine/ But cold now only crack a smile at lunch time/ And in her soul she old now don’t sound good/ Playing games with boys looking for childhood/ What she found was a wild hood where now and then/ People get found drowned without a doubt of when / They lost the ground in the race running but out of wind/ Without a sound or trace then it begins again/ Confusion everywhere!

A young lady throwing up in the trash/ Her belly was full that’s why she throwing up in the trash or/ Maybe because the cover of a magazine/ Had a her favorite singer looking like she like to sag her jeans/ But she a size zero and she 5’9”/ Her waistline looking like she need to find swine/ And just pig out put the coke down/ Cut through her clothes cus her hip bones poke out/ But no hokey pokey just hocus pocus/ A magic trick leaving women sick and feeling hopeless/ Trying to lose more but now its all gone/ Killing herself, thinking that her flaws gone/ But the only error was the mascara/ Packed over a patch on her lash where a/ Sparkle was shining sharper than diamonds/ Lost and dying exhausted a search for self and finding/ Confusion everywhere!

The young man turned man of the house/ The only man he knew was He-Man and the army scouts/ He look hard like he carved of a drought/ Everywhere is a scar with no regard for the large amounts of pain/ His mother suffers working hard to doubt/ That he’s headed for the yard where his father bounced a shame/ Seeing what he became she blame herself for it/ Pregnant at 14 with no help for it/ She would have aborted couldn’t afford it/ Then at 16 found herself holding a daughter damn/ Dropped out of school turned prostitute/Throwing up her food trying to gain a trick or two/ But to no avail all she know is hell/ She wanna find peace where the angels dwell/ But, how to get there she can’t imagine it/ Looking at her life all she see is a scatter with/ Confusion everywhere!
Track Name: FELA
F.E.L.A.

A wise man, born in a bad land torn/ Between being what was in the teaching of the preachers or taking the form/ Of his mother, black activist in the war and his brothers/ Both practicing the medicine of westerners, settlers/ Selling development, only if you Shell or you well off/ Off Fela flew to the center of it all/ Londontown home of the crown where he saw rejection/ Wasn’t wanted for his color no matter the inflection / Of his English genius mean with his fingers/ Making people sing what he dreamed to redeem us

No good as a follower/ Fela switched it up and went to college for/ Music over the doctors started a band and making it proper/ Taking the hand of Remi mother of Femi, and plus Yeni and Sola/ Soldiers back in Nigeria appearing to hold up/ They own for control of the oil and to go nuts/ Raping and killing pillaging til it blow up and life end/ Right then Fela took a trip to the land of Americans land of the arrogance/ Landed in LA and met the panthers and ever since/ The answer in the song was to fight for every inch

On a quest for a place to call home/ Laid to rest the place he called home / Changed the rest his name that of a slave / And so he became Anikulapo death his pocket he raised / A place for his people to be free / A state a republic in the maze / With no demo craze crazy demonstration of democracy ablaze / Engaging situations where hypocrisy is praised / Zombies up in Fela’s crib with an army beating up the kids / Raping the women making a criminal of freedom / Put his mother through the window no wonder why we grieve him

A man for all people well I guess there is / Exceptions if you on the wrong side of the election list or / You get a check from kids left in shit left to live / With nothing but a plan for survival / A plan for right now no future to fight for / But hold tight ya’ll look at the light ya’ll / Fela showed us the way showed us a life full / Of passion power poetry in motion / With a sax and hours devoted to showing / The task is ours to grow from the blows / And the ashes to flowers Felatastic!