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A posthumous album captures the legendary drummer and Afrobeat icon at his most copacetic and polished, meeting collaborators at their level even as he urges them to his.
In a video from a Paris recording session in 2014, Tony Oladipo Allen jams behind a drum set, hands lightly grasping the sticks, his body at ease. His mind was likely laser-focused on the rhythms, and yet nothing about him reads tense or forced. In this moment, the late drummer, composer, and Fela Kuti collaborator personifies Black coolâa term that, to borrow from the Roots drummer Questloveâs description, means Allen radiated âcool heat, intensity held in check by reserves of self-possession.â