Event · 1975 · Lagos [6.46, 3.39]
The "Expensive Shit" Police Episode
By widely-told account, a clash with the Lagos police saw officers try to frame Fela Kuti with a planted joint, which he is said to have swallowed to deny them their evidence. Fela cast the grotesque episode into the 1975 album Expensive Shit, documented by the cited sources. The story has come to stand for the constant, intimate harassment the afrobeat scene faced from the state well before the Kalakuta raid.
Evidence2
- Wikidata: Expensive ShitWikidata
www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5421015
accessed 2026-06-04
- MusicBrainz: Expensive ShitMusicBrainz
musicbrainz.org/release-group/b16d9280-f25e-3648-8a8e-1141efd55669
accessed 2026-06-04
Connections1
reacts against → Expensive Shit (1975)
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.