Tony Allen "Home Cooking" - The drummer from Fela Kuti's band on yet another solo album. You can of course hear the roots of afrobeat, but he combines it with some other styles. There's a definite influence of cool jazz, hip-hop, and psychedelic music in here. The energy level is all pretty cool and mellow. He also has lots of guest artists to sing or rap. Check out the liner notes for info on what some of the performers say about each song. All these songs are quite good. If you're in the mood to groove try one out.
My Picks: 4, 5, 7, 8
Katie P. 4/23/03

1) Dragging midtempo with minimal guitar to start. Slow groover that's really laid back. Some sung vocals and some rap. Ends abruptly.
2) Uptempo afrobeat starts it all off. When vocals come in it mellows out a bit. Kind of odd lyrics. Talks about how home cooking food is good for you and gives you energy and how you shouldn't eat junk food. Then sort of takes the analogy to beats.
3) Starts with percussion and slowly builds into a nice grooving afrobeat. Looking for a new anti-war song? You just found one. Female la-la backups with some male spoken word. Chorus is sung. Some other people come in and rap about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
4) Starts very quiet with some windy noise and then the drums come in. Slowly builds up mixing a deliberate beat with swishy noise. Cool mellow groover with interesting lyrics.
5) Drums kick it off. Oooo, great afrogroove horns come in. Tony Allen is singing in Yoruba with the rapper translating it into English. This is pretty cool.
6) Slower and cool. Really nice rhodes. Kind of jazzy. Really nice female vocals layered on this.
7) Serious afrobeat groover here. As it says in the liner notes for this song "just dance." Actually, you may just want to groove, it's not crazy high energy but it does make you move.
8) Cool jazzy afrobeat. Ooo, the vibraphone!! This is nice.
9) Uptempo with a great beat. Cool chorus. Also has some scratching. Fcc: says "shit."
10) Slower funky groove. Heavy rhodes with afrobeat drums and orchestrated strings.
11) Low creeping afrobeat with layered vocals on top. This is nice. Ends abruptly.