Release · 1975 · Lagos [6.46, 3.39]
Expensive Shit (1975)
Expensive Shit, released in 1975 and credited to Fela on the cited sources, takes its title from a notorious episode, widely recounted, in which police are said to have tried to use a planted joint to jail him. The album turns that cat-and-mouse with the authorities into a defiant, danceable afrobeat groove. It stands among the genre's most pointed satires of state harassment.
Evidence2
- MusicBrainz: Expensive ShitMusicBrainz
musicbrainz.org/release-group/b16d9280-f25e-3648-8a8e-1141efd55669
accessed 2026-06-04
- Wikidata: Expensive ShitWikidata
www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5421015
accessed 2026-06-04
Connections1
reacted against by → The "Expensive Shit" Police Episode
Fela Kuti answered the police's attempt to frame him by turning the whole humiliating affair into the 1975 album Expensive Shit, making art directly out of his own arrest. The record is a clear case of afrobeat converting state harassment into satire. It shows the scene's reflex of meeting repression with recorded defiance.