Femi Kuti Quotes

Our leaders should start talking as leaders. They talk like puppets. It might take us another 100 years to come out of this phase of corruption and mismanagement. But the good thing is that we are more aware, and more Africans are talking about these things.

I will never put anybody before my family because your family is your family.

Whenever I'm faced with an issue, I deal with it squarely, even if I was going to fail, I try to learn from my mistakes. So if we appreciate our past, then we can understand where we are at presently.

I believe in the Creator. I don't believe the creator is God. If you change G-O-D the other way, it becomes dog.

I don't understand, who is God. I don't understand God. But to simplify that, I will say I believe in creation. They say God is the Supreme Being. I don't believe so. I don't believe God created us in his image. I believe we are too small to understand totally the cosmic wonder of the universe.

Africans should be talking and ask questions, like why does America and Russia have the right to veto votes? These countries talk about democracy and yet are not democratic themselves.

Who knows why I had to go through what I had to go through to produce the kind of music I produce today, to be one of the greatest Africans playing music, who knows?

I think this my last album - No Place For My Dream - truly is my best work. My fear now is, I don't know if I can do better than this in my lifetime, because technically, sound quality, composition, the melody is really high standard, it's very scary; the way it was recorded, the way I was focused. I think it is top of the music scene.

When I die, I want to see Malcom X, Lumumba, my father, and I want to be able to look them in the eye

I think part of our faults as humans is that we are very arrogant and I think we have taken many things for granted because of the way European have taken us, which is a failure and for them to totally come out and accept is a failure.

Looking deeper into African way of life, it wasn't religious; it was spiritual. When you go into spiritualism, spiritualism will teach you about virtues, how to be patient, humble and kind.

Spirituality is when we can't explain everything in life, totally. So, we have a spiritual meaning for it; we don't know why we are here really.

We need to teach our children history, right from the primary school level, for them to better understand the issues. In my son's school they don't teach history.

Before slavery, Africa had a culture. We had medicine and our cure for malaria. Slavery brought diseases that we were not used to; slavery brought industry and people were criticizing industry way back as 2,000 years ago, that it was going to pollute the air, sea. Industry is not the way. We must deal with nature.

Someone asked me what legacy I wanted to leave and all my answers were so long that I even bored him. I said I don't care. Why should I? I will die someday. So if you like, remember me.

I'm not saying we are not to be held accountable. What I'm saying is that we need to appreciate past, if you don't appreciate past, you cannot understand why we are like this, why the churches and mosques are controlling our society, why Africans feel inferior. Why are our girls bleaching or make long hair? They all want to be white, Why are they not proud? Why are we not proud of name, of our clothes?

I just practice. I do six hours of practice everyday. I set to teach myself the trumpet they all said I would never play. I put the organ in my music, like if you listen to my work Day By Day, which got me my second Grammy nomination.

My children think I'm the perfect father, but I try to bring them up to know that, 'when you are old enough you will find some faults in me, so keep an open mind.'

Now we have to understand that slavery would not have ended if it was left to the Africans alone, Now, Europe understood that what they were doing then was unjust, but imagine the propaganda from kings and queens of Europe to convince their people that we were cannibals, idol worshipers, horrible people, bastards, godless monkeys.

It is history that has distorted our lives and complicated issues. The good thing is; whether we like it or not, a lot of us are still fighting. If there was no Nkrumah, there probably won't have been a Fela Anikulapo Kuti. I appreciate the fact that he stood and risked his life. I am proud of his courage, but if you asked if he was a conventional father who did homework with me and taught me music, he did nothing of this.

I know I trust people too much, although I try to be a bit firm, but it is a fault that we have learnt from my father.

I don't smoke or drink, but I will not tell you that I won't smoke again. Probably I will when I'm 60.