Fela Kuti’s Landmark Recordings Zombie & Expensive Shit Celebrated On Heels of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction, Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award

Expensive Shit 50th Anniversary Edition Available November 20

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony to Take Place November 14 in Los Angeles

October 6, 2026-Fela Kuti, the pioneering Nigerian musician, activist, composer and creator of Afrobeat, has been significantly honored throughout 2026, including his posthumous induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fameand earning the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy. The celebration of Kuti's music and legacy continues this fall tied to two of Kuti's landmark recordings, Zombie and Expensive Shit. Today a limited edition Zombie collaboration with Tremaine Emory's Denim Tears has been announced and will be released on October 9, while a 50th Anniversary Edition of Expensive Shit is available for pre-order now and will be released on November 20.

Zombie - Denim Tears (Tremaine Emory) x Zombie limited edition vinyl + t-shirt, available October 9

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Denim Tears founder and designer Tremaine Emory has cited Zombie as a major influence in his life. To pay tribute to Zombie, Emory chose to reimagine the album packaging in a way that directly connects it back to Lagos and the New Afrika Shrine, while still paying homage to Lemi Ghariokwu's iconic original design. Emory implemented images of the New Afrika Shrine taken by Bolaji Alonge into this limited edition vinyl release.

A limited edition of 1000 Zombie LPs will be exclusively available at Dover Street Market London, Turntable Lab in the US, and globally at Partisan Records' and Fela Kuti's online stores. The T-shirt will be available exclusively through Denim Tears, Dover Street Market and the DSML E-SHOP. Dover Street Market will host its annual Frieze celebrations in London from 14-18 October, with Emory in attendance at an invitation-only event on 15 October, coinciding with what would have been Kuti's 88th birthday.

"It's an honor to work on this 50th anniversary vinyl release of Zombie, and also some apparel. It's been an honor to work with Fela's estate and family, and it was an honor to DJ their party with my brother Acyde during the Grammys earlier this year. I'm looking forward to the other events that we have with them in New York and London.

Fela is one of the most inspiring artists of any genre of art to me that has ever existed. The music and the lyrics are just as apparent today as they were when they were first made, hoping for more people to stand for the things he stood for and his family still stands for." - Tremaine Emory

Kuti's 1976 album Zombie was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2025 and made history as the first Nigerian album to be inducted. Zombie has been widely honored as a groundbreaking work of protest music, and among other accolades Pitchfork named it one of the Best Albums of the 1970s, saying, "perhaps Fela's most effective fusion of funk and politics, it confronted Nigeria's increasingly corrupt, detached government head-on, and in doing so both united the public and incensed the ruling party." The two-track album, featuring "Zombie" and "Mr. Follow Follow," was quickly embraced by the people of Nigeria; its popularity led to an attack on the Kalakuta Republic by the Nigerian military. Kuti's compound was destroyed, he was beaten, and his elderly mother, Funmilayo Kuti, was thrown from a window, resulting in fatal injuries.

Expensive Shit - 50th Anniversary edition, available November 20

Pre-order and more information

Designed by Tarin Karimbux, this limited 50th Anniversary edition is pressed on gold nugget vinyl, housed inside a trifold jacket that features elements of the original vinyl packaging alongside newly licensed images from Femi Bankole Osunla and John Collins, a dossier envelope with poster, print, and newspaper clipping, wrapped with a metallic gold foil band.

On Expensive Shit, Fela Kuti chronicles a failed attempt to imprison him for possession of weed in 1974. At this time, Nigeria was under a military dictatorship that had declared a war on indecency. Fela's insubordination infuriated the government, and they repeatedly raided his compound, Kalakuta. During one of the raids, an officer produced a joint from his own pocket and attempted to plant it on Fela, which Fela then swallowed. He was immediately taken to prison, where the police waited three days for him to "produce" an incriminating sample. When the time came, police took Fela's sample for analysis and found nothing. Each night, Fela and his cellmates had swapped their slop buckets around, allowing Fela to relieve himself without the authorities realizing it. By the time of the public shit, there was no marijuana left in his system. The police had no choice but to let him go.

Expensive Shit is featured on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, and includes "Water No Get Enemy," one of Kuti's best-known recordings.

2026 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductee

Recognizing Kuti's profound global impact on music, culture, and political expression, the posthumous honor will take place at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on November 14. The 2026 class of inductees also includes Phil Collins, Billy Idol, Iron Maiden, Joy Division/New Order, Oasis, Sade, Luther Vandross, Wu-Tang Clan, Celia Cruz, Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Gram Parsons, Linda Creed, Arif Mardin, Jimmy Miller, Rick Rubin and Ed Sullivan. Kuti is being honored with the Early Influence Award, and is the first African solo artist to be inducted. He joins a distinguished list of Musical Influence Award recipients including Warren Zevon and Salt-N-Pepa.

2026 Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award

This past January, Kuti was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award issued by the Recording Academy®. Kuti received the Lifetime Achievement Award alongside Carlos Santana, Chaka Khan, Cher, Paul Simon and Whitney Houston, and it was accepted by Fela Kuti's children Femi, Yeni, Kunle, and Shalewa during the Special Merit Awards Ceremony.

Fela Kuti on Jeopardy!, Track Star & More

Fela Kuti has recently been featured as a clue on Jeopardy!, Mayor Mamdani commented that the Broadway musical Fela! was a foundational piece of art from his youth, actor Andrew Garfield told Track Star that he prepared for his role as Spider-Man by listening to Kuti's music, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame just highlighted some of the musicians that have sighted him as an inspiration-from Beyonce to Brian Eno to Nas.

Fela Kuti: Fear No Man

2026 Peabody Award-winning 12-episode podcast series, presented by Audible and Higher Ground, and produced by Talkhouse and Western Sound. Hosted by 3-time Peabody Award-winner Jad Abumrad (Radiolab, Dolly Parton's America), this in-depth documentation of Kuti's life and legacy was culled from over 200 conversations that Abumrad conducted with his family and friends, as well as historians, activists, luminaries and fans like President Barack Obama, Ayo Edibiri, David Byrne, Brian Eno and Santigold. It also includes previously recorded interviews with Paul McCartney, Questlove and Burna Boy. Landing at #1 on the New Yorker's Best Podcasts of 2025 , the magazine describes it as "bursting with life, humor, pain, interesting ideas, and, of course, sharp, catchy, hypnotic music…I can't think of another show that's both danceable and, by its end, profoundly heartbreaking."

About :

Fela Anikulapo Kuti (1938-1997) was a Nigerian musician, producer, arranger, political radical, outlaw, and father of Afrobeat. Fela's legacy spans decades and genres, touching on jazz, pop, funk, hip-hop, rock, and beyond. In the 1960s, he created the genre and popularized it by combining funk, jazz, salsa, calypso, and a blend of traditional Nigerian rhythms.

Fela recorded over fifty albums during his lifetime, becoming one of the most revered musicians across the world. Beyonce paid homage and incorporated his track "Zombie" into her iconic 2018 Coachella performance. Paul McCartney, Bono, and Ms. Lauryn Hill have all visited the Shrine, the venue where Fela performed in Lagos. Talking Heads' album Remain In Light nods heavily to Fela's album Afrodisiac (the expanded version of Remain In Light includes an album outtake titled "Fela's Riff"). Thom Yorke cited Fela's style of storytelling as a major source of inspiration for Atoms for Peace. In Miles Davis' autobiography, he named Fela as one of three artists that he considered the future of music. His music has been sampled by Kelly Rowland, Wyclef Jean, Earl Sweatshirt, Common, J Cole, Mos Def, Nas, The Roots and countless more. In addition to the musicians he's inspired, Fela has also greatly influenced "Afrobeats," the new wave of pop music in Nigeria.

A titanic musical and sociopolitical voice, Afrobeat's revolutionary politics brought Fela into violent conflict with successive Nigerian military regimes, which made many attempts to suppress him and once sent in the army to burn down his communal home, Kalakuta Republic. His mother later died as a result of the raid. Fela refused to be silenced. He rebuilt Kalakuta and his Lagos club, the Afrika Shrine, and continued to make fierce and supremely danceable music until a few weeks before his passing in 1997. His funeral was attended by over one million people, the highest number of attendees recorded at a ceremony of this nature in Africa, surpassed only by Nelson Mandela's.

Fela! The Musical had a two-year run on Broadway from 2008-2010 and was backed by Jay-Z and Will & Jada Smith. Director and choreographer Bill T. Jones won the Tony Award for Best Choreography for Fela! in 2010. Fela was inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2026. His music has also been used across the world in film, TV, advertisements and games such as The Harder They Fall, Beast, Queen and Slim, Atlanta, Narcos, Gucci, Guinness, Ciroc, Nike, Grand Theft Auto & many more. Fear No Man - a 12-episode podcast series, presented by President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground and Audible, and produced by Talkhouse and Western Sound, debuted in 2025, and Fela's life story has been documented in multiple films, including 2014's Finding Fela! (directed by Alex Gibney), and 1982's Fela Kuti: Music Is The Weapon (directed by Jean Jaques Flori and Stéphane Tchalgadjieff).

Fela's legacy continues to live on through his family. His son Femi leads The Positive Force. Fela's other son, Seun, leads Egypt 80, and his daughter Yeni and son Kunle are the keepers of the Kalakuta Museum and the New Afrika Shrine. Mádé (Fela's grandson) has played alongside his father, Femi, and has recently launched a solo career of his own. An annual celebration in honor of Fela, known as Felabration, takes place in Lagos and around the world each October. In 2009, Knitting Factory Records and Partisan Records began reissuing his catalog, including six vinyl boxsets, curated by Questlove (2011), Ginger Baker (2012), Brian Eno (2014), Erykah Badu (2017), Chris Martin & Femi Kuti (2021), and Idris Elba (2023).