Tony Allen & Africa 70

★★★★

No Accommodation For Lagos COMET. LP

The Afrobeat drummer’s last solo gasp with Fela.

Continuing their comprehensive Tony Allen reissue programme, the latest offering from French label Comet is No Accommodation

For Lagos, the third of the solo albums that drummer Allen recorded with Africa 70 behind him and Fela Kuti in the producer’s chair. On the A-side, over a tight Afrobeat groove that is entirely in keeping with Fela’s late-’70s releases, vocalist Candido Obajimi sings of the chronic housing shortages facing new arrivals in the Nigerian capital, with Fela on didactic electric piano and Allen procuring a complex rhythmic backbeat. On the more fluid B-side, the musings on Afrobeat’s content and form titled African Message points to the evolving hybrid style that Allen would further develop with his African Messengers on subsequent release No Discrimination, which is also released in the series, the latter marking his definitive break with Fela.