Fela Anikulapo Kuti was the Afrobeat music maestro whose life and time provide the lens through which we can outline the postcolonial trajectory of the Nigerian state as well as the dynamics of most other African states. Through the Afrobeat music, Fela did not only challenge consecutive governments in Nigeria, but his rebellious Afrobeat lyrics facilitate a philosophical subtext that enriches the more intellectual Afrocentric discourses. Afrobeat and the philosophy of blackism that Fela enunciated place him right beside Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Garvey, and all the others who champion a black and African mode of being in the world. This book traces the emergence of Fela on the music scene, the cultural and political backgrounds that made Afrobeat possible, and the philosophical elements that not only contributed to the formation of Fela's blackism, but what constitutes Fela's philosophical sensibility too.

Adeshina Afolayan is a senior lecturer of philosophy at University of Ibadan, Nigeria. His areas of specialization include African philosophy, political philosophy and cultural studies. He is the editor of Auteuring Nollywood (2014), author of Philosophy and National Development in Nigeria (2018), the coeditor of the Palgrave Handbook of African Philosophy (2017), and the coeditor of Pentecostalism and Politics in Africa (2018).

Toyin Falola is the Jacob and Frances Sanger Mossiker Chair in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He has several books to his credit, cutting across history, cultural studies, and African studies. Professor Falola holds 7 honorary doctorates, several prestigious lifetime career awards (including the Distinguished Africanist Award from the African Studies Association). A total of 9 Fetschriften have been written in his honour on the creation of the construction of the subaltern. He served as Vice President of UNESCO's International Scientific Committee, Slave Route Project from 2011 - 2015 and currently on the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellows Programme and the International Committee of the Thabo Mbeki African Leadership Institute at UNISA.