THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Afrobeat virtuoso Seun Kuti’s latest album Heavier Yet (Lays The Crownless Head) arrives six years after the Grammy-nominated album Black Times — and marks a pivotal moment in his illustrious career, showcasing his evolution as an artist and activist.
Executive produced by Lenny Kravitz and his father Fela Kuti’s original engineer Sodi Marciszewer (artistic producer), Heavier Yet (Lays The Crownless Head) deliver a sonic experience like no other. With both Kravitz’s and Sodi’s expertise together with Seun’s unmatched talent, the album redefine the boundaries of Afrobeat while staying true to its roots.
Featuring a tracklist of six electrifying songs, Heavier Yet (Lays The Crownless Head) embodies the spirit of resistance, resilience, and revolution. Each song talks about standing up against challenges and fighting for change. Dey (featuring reggae icon Damian Marley) is “a song about embracing and championing who we are.” Emi Aluta is about “a song about struggle (Aluta means struggle) that pays homage to all the great revolutionaries” — and features Zambian singer, rapper and songwriter Sampa The Great, one of the most innovative lyricists of our time. T.O.P. is about how society values money and success more than people. Seun wants to change this by promoting empathy and reconnecting with nature. In Love and Revolution, he expresses his love for his wife and believes that true love can inspire people to make the world a better place.
“This project has been very special to me from the moment I conceived it, speaking to Lenny Kravitz, who has shown me such a brotherly love and respect” Seun says. “He has brought me to his home. I met his daughter Zoe and he has guided us with fierceness. Since we spoke about the album three years ago, as the executive producer of this project, he has always been by our side and very supportive… I (also) want to thank Craig Ross and Sodi, the producer of this project. We had a great time. It was the first time for me in the studio with Sodi and I was really impressed by his work and his fatherly advice and dedication.”
Through his powerful lyrics and infectious grooves, he continues to carry on the legacy of his father Fela while carving out his own path in the world of music. As a musician and pan-African activist, Seun has been involved in a number of campaigns in recent years, including a social movement against police brutality in Nigeria. Significantly, he’s revived the Movement of the People, the political party his father set up in 1979, which was quashed by the military government not long after Fela’s failed presidential bid.
Seun is Fela’s youngest son, and has spent most of his life preserving and extending his father’s political and musical legacy as the leader of his father’s former band Egypt 80. As a developing saxophonist and percussionist, he entered the formal ranks of the band before he was 12. In 1997 when Fela passed, in fulfilment of his father’s wishes, Seun assumed the mantle as head of the band and he has run it ever since. They have released four previous albums: Many Things (2008), From Africa with Fury: Rise for Knitting Factory Records (2011, coproduced by Brian Eno and John Reynolds), A Long Way Beginning (2014) and Black Times (2018). The latter included a feature from Carlos Santana.”
