With this album, his sophomore offering, Dele Sosimi, ex-Fela sideman and former musical director of Femi Kuti, has delivered a confident, passionate, elegant and intelligently crafted answer to Afrobeat’s real identity crisis, and he has done this without losing the swagger and the grit that is Afrobeat. Afrobeat is an iconoclastic music. It is essentially the creation and vision of Fela Anikulapo Kuti, who took hard bop, the modal experiments of Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock, the Afrocentric black power sentiments prevalent in the free jazz movement, fused it with James Brown, took it back to its Nigerian roots and put it all on the one. Ojoro – Ojoro is a left-jab, right-hook and total takedown of a riposte, aimed at certain elements in the music industry. In classic Afrobeat/hip-hop “battle-rap” mode, Sosimi tackles the question of authenticity and personal identity within a musical genre. Bass, drums, keyboards and guitar enter toget...