My mind back-tracked to one afternoon in the mid-2000s during a radio programme on BBC World. I recalled running around the house looking for a spare tape onto which to record that moment. Tony Allen was being interviewed, a man of whom great things were spoken. It was Allen’s loose groove which drove many of Fela Kuti’s seminal releases, including Expensive shit, a personal favourite.

My memory of the nineties lacked any traces of Afrobeat. Instead of swinging drumbeats, flawless horn section arrangements, and muted basslines, I had grown up to the hyper-clean, hyper-generic sound of Zouk on national radio. In some way, discovering Fela’s music and getting to read up on the man’s life and his politics became a form of rebellion.

I had heard Bra Hugh’s version of Lady. The beloved ol’ timer of South African jazz understood the music. After all, they’d hung out at Fela’s Kalakuta republic during the seventies. “She go say I be lady oh” Hugh would sing, as he still does to this day at live shows, intently belting out each word while his band holds down a township jazz groove, negotiating the path where kasi and Afrobeat intersect.

I also dug what the Chimurenga publication had been doing down in Cape Town by actively reclaiming Fela as their own, even adopting the phrase “Who no know go know”, a Fela song, as their slogan. Kenyan cool kids Just A Band and rapper Childish Gambino repurpose it on their down-tempo ode. “Nkrumah shout for Africa oh”, Just A Band sings, but it all sounds too clean and a tad hollow. There is no sense of urgency, and not a hint of an appreciation of the painful incidents which marred Fela’s life.

It’s the second time Red Hot, the pop culture-conscious AIDS organization behind Red Hot + Fela, is visiting the man’s music (the first was 2002s “Red Hot + Riot: The Music and Spirit of Fela Kuti”).

I quickly notice the flaws; there seems to be an underlying assumption by the executives in charge of the project. In theory, throwing a set of undoubtedly interesting artists together to pay homage to Fela (while raising funds for Red Hot’s HIV/AIDS initiatives) could make for outstanding results. Realistically, some of the collaborations will work while others will only look pretty on paper.

For example, Baloji (above) sits comfortably on Buy Africa as he flexes politically-aware rhyming couplets in French alongside L’Orchestre De La Katuba’s steady musical rumble, but tUnE-yArDs’ foray into Lady territory (with Questlove, Angelique Kidjo, and Akua Naru) is lightweight at best.

Or is that the whole point, I wonder.

I read an interview recently in which Fela’s son Femi Kuti was quoted as having said that critics pointed to how Americanised the musical Fela! was. “They did not want to show Fela’s story from the Nigerian perspective. They wanted the American and the international market to understand the Fela story,” he says, adding that the play did however awaken its audience to many of the issues Fela addressed in his music.

He theorises that what Femi essentially suggests in that interview is a departure from how his father’s image has been seen in the past. Fela is no longer exclusive to Lagos, neither is he still confined to the boundaries of Afrobeat (as witnessed in Zaki Ibrahim and Spoek Mathambo’s floor-stomping version of Yellow fever). He’s transcended to cult status, a symbol ‘honoured’ in lecture halls, the subject of a ‘definitive documentary’, and the focus of a biopic currently in the works. That is not entirely a bad thing.

Nneka and Sinkane also have a song together, No buredi. The results float somewhere between the bastard child of chillwave and a half-baked attempt at disco. It’s My Morning Jacket’s ear-shattering awesomeness on “Trouble Sleep Yanga Wake Am” which gets me excited. Those horns! Impeccably-arranged, with the added advantage of a fuller sound, the engineers over at Knitting Factory Records know how to twist their knobs.

Regardless of the project’s impressive cast and its funders’ undoubtedly good intentions, it is hard not to wonder whose version of Africa is being addressed here.

This past week, on what would have been Fela Kuti’s 75th birthday, close to ten years after I heard that interview, I log onto twitter. BBC Africa’s stream wants to know how people have been influenced by Fela’s music. The responses range from how he taught people about their rights, to how songs like Suffering and smiling are as poignant today as when they were recorded by Africa ‘70 and Egypt ‘80 respectively. But it was writer Siddhartha Mitter’s words which seem to best articulate what I’ve been feeling.