Fela Kuti Vinyl Records
It's almost impossible to overstate the impact and importance of Fela Anikulapo (Ransome) Kuti -- or just Fela, as he's more commonly known -- to the global musical village. As a producer, multi-instrumentalist, and bandleader with a larger than life personality, Kuti combined the raw guitars and jazzy undercurrents of traditional highlife with tight horn arrangements, electrifying polyrhythms, and politically charged lyrical content for the creation of Afrobeat. Kuti had an unparalleled hot streak throughout the '70s with frequent electrifying concert performances and genre-defining Afrobeat albums like 1975's Expensive Shit and 1977's Zombie. A star in Nigeria at the time, his music would have a global ripple effect long after his death in 1997.