Sunday Music: The Most “Expensive S***” In Musical History

In 1974, Fela Kuti took the most expensive s*** in Nigerian history. It’s not in the Guinness Book, but it ought to be. It makes for not just a wacky (if not slightly debatable) world record, but it’s an amazing story - and, since this is a Sunday music post, there’s a great song in here too.

Fela’s a complicated guy - musically, politically, personally. All the wives, the cult energy, the “but what are your politics” politics. You will wrestle with that. It’s worth it. If you don’t know him, I have to warn you. If you do know him, I have to signal that I know this too.

In case you weren’t waiting for this to come out for forever too, The audiobook, Fela Kuti: Fear Not Man, by Jad Abumrad (and team) is excellent. It gives Fela an arc beyond his lifetime and stitches the music, the man, and the movement together in a way no docu-series really has. If you want the long, weird, beautifully constructed version of his complicated existence in audio-only format, start there.

The best new material for me, that this series gets pretty deep into, is his mother - how she was raised, and how she behaved while raising him. Think Riot grrl meets Malcolm X meets Yoruba chaos agent, both as his mom and as a (literal) local revolutionary. You also get why his symbolic popularity has surged again over the past few decades, even as his actual life only looks more intense in hindsight.

If you loved James Brown and Dilla in the 90s, as I did, you eventually end up in Fela’s Afrobeat rabbithole. But the punk energy is what sets it apart, mostly because it’s just so undeniable - the politics, the edge, the audacity. Think the sneer of “God Save the Queen” with the paranoid theorizing of “California Über Alles,” peppered with an “I Give You Nothing”-style refusal to play nice. But with, like, Public Enemy on the top and Parliament Funkadelic underneath.

You can’t mess with Fela’s music, even if the more you learn about him, the more you ask, “should I like this guy?” He declared his compound a separate state from Nigeria, married 27 wives (all of them band members), and refused modern medical treatment in favor of traditional healers and spiritual practice. He was out there.

And my favorite story - the one that got me to really listen hard - is “Expensive S***.” As in, the most expensive s*** ever taken. Maybe not ever, inflation-adjusted and all that, but certainly the most expensive s*** anyone in Nigeria at the time had ever taken, which he could claim, and then made a hit record out of.

There are stories upon stories upon stories like this once you start digging into Fela. You shouldn’t go in just for the novelty, but if this hooks you, it weirdly gives you a sense of the range of genius on display - from the most base human instincts to the most pointed social philosophy.

In the early 1970s, Fela declared his home, commune, and compound the independent Kalakuta Republic, separate from the Nigerian state. The government did not love this. But without a clear crime - or act of violence, and with his popularity as a musical performer, they realized they needed something else to pin on him.

They knew he loved weed. So they leaned on harsh drug laws - possession could mean up to ten years, cultivation even worse - and waited for him to slip. He didn’t slip, though. At least not outside Kalakuta.

Next move: raid the compound. Repeatedly. The goal was to get anything that would stick. In 1974, they hit Kalakuta for the upteenth time, and on this particular raid, an officer showed up with a planted joint, ready to “find” it on him. They hold the joint in Fela’s face with that “we got you now” energy and this next part feels like the scene from a movie.

Fela takes one look - snatches it out of the officers hand and eats the joint. He really ate it. Swallowed it fast, too. On the spot. The cops did not love this.

They haul him into custody and decide they’ll wait him out. As soon as he takes a s***, they’ll test it and nail him in court. Rock solid police strategy if ever there was one.

Three days go by - and nothing. No s***. It becomes a running joke and a news item: (read this with news anchor voice) “authorities are waiting for the man to poop.” On the fourth day, he finally announces he has to go. Game on. The relief the cops must have felt. So he goes, they collect it, send it to the lab…and it comes back clean.

The police are stunned. Fela is smiling. With no further evidence to hold him, he walks away free.

In the version told in the audiobook: Fela had arranged with another prisoner to swap slop buckets, so that anything the police checked would be someone else’s, not his. Meanwhile, his allies (including his mother) were making sure he had food that would help flush his system. By the time he finally “went,” his body had already done the work.

It really is one of the craziest musical origin stories of a song ever.

Which, enough preambling. Now we’re ready to get to the song. It’s equally ingenious.

“Expensive S***” opens with a story about a goat. A goat takes a s*** and steps away from it. No relationship, no sentimentality, just instinct: get away from the thing that smells.

Then a monkey. Same act, same desire to get away once it’s out. Same question: why would a monkey hang around?

Finally, man. There’s a great “but…” that kicks off this part. In Fela’s telling, man stays close to his s*** because only man - in government and in uniform - wants to hang around s*** and pick through it.

Man is pretty weird, eh?

Then the call-and-response that anchors it all:

“Because why o? / Because the s*** dey smell!”

Only man gives s*** this level of importance and value that defies common instinct. Only man can be this distracted by s***.

The government and the police did not love the song. Shocking, I know. But if you know the story, and if you know how some governments and some cops can be, you know he’s right.

Play “Expensive S***.” Queue up Fela Kuti: Fear Not Man on Audible if you want the big, cinematic version of the legend. Wrestle with the genius and the mess. And by all means - stay away from the s*** they give too much value to. Fela knew: only man picks through s*** looking for meaning. The rest of nature just moves on.