Seun Kuti has said that there was nothing as difficult as growing up as the son of late Afro Beat legend Fela.
The activist and leader of Movement of The People (MOP) who took over his father’s Egypt 80 band said this during a live session on Instagram. He noted that while people might think it was all rosy for him being one of the sons of one of Africa’s music greats, there were a lot of challenges.
Seun Kuti said being Fela’s son cannot be compared to poverty in terms of hardship.
“You might think poverty is hard but poverty is not hard oh! Throughout when I was growing up, only one of my girlfriend’s moms would allow me to come to their house or their shop and stay over. But that was when Fela had died,” he said.
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Kuti continued, “When my father was alive, I could not enter any girlfriend’s house and my dad never did anything wrong to anybody before. When my dad was alive, the media and elite said a lot of things to spoil his name.
“All these things have given me thick skin against all the nonsense people do. So my haters shouldn’t think they are the only haters out there, I am the chief hater of Africa. When it comes to hate, I hate the people you are afraid to hate.”
The father of one also revealed what he dislikes most is people equating the new music acts with the legendary Fela Anikulapo Kuti.
Kuti said, “When you people carry one of your new artistes that you like you will now say he is the new Fela… That thing annoys me a lot and I have hated him immediately; because you people tend to forget that Fela wasn’t just this musician that you started liking. Fela was also a man and was my father. So when you say an artist is the new Fela, you are automatically saying the new artiste is my father.”