What does it mean to play Afrobeat today? For Washington, D.C., group Chopteeth (a Yoruba word meaning "crazy fool," which you'd have to be to wrestle with Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti's ghost), the results are somewhere between nostalgia trip and 21st-century reboot. Like Common's underrated 1999 album, "Like Water for Chocolate," Chopteeth's debut album, "Afrofunk Big Band," wonders what Afrobeat might sound like, given a hip-hop makeover and a glossy sound. The formula is pleasingly simple but varies from track to track. "Weigh Your Blessings" and album closer "No Condition Is Permanent" place mild-mannered MCs atop raging guitars, while "Upendo" brings that sickly sweet Soweto beat. Rich, swaggering horns occupy center stage everywhere, much as they did in Kuti's day, but now they must justify their supremacy. "Herky Jerk," the most propulsive track here, pits those horns against chunky, bottom-heavy guitars in a duel to the death. Chopteeth, like their musical heroes, write political lyrics (see the we've-hit-rock-bottom rant "Dog Days), but their appropriation of Afrobeat means that the music itself provides its own political content. (Out now)

SAUL AUSTERLITZ