11 years ago -- Nigeria lost a musical legend... and a young man lost his father.

KUTI: "My father died in my second year of my teenage years, when I was 14. So when I was like 10, 11, 12, 13, I was performing with him all the time, but I wasn't improving. I wasn't doing it to be a star. So we lost my dad. We lost Fela. A great shock. Turmoil everywhere."

Turmoil especially in the life of then-14 year-old Seun Kuti.

Seun and his brother Femi are the two successful musical offspring of the late Nigerian afrobeat innovator Fela Kuti.

Seun was the youngest of Fela's children.

He began playing with his father's "Egypt 80" band when he was just 9.

Since then, Seun has hard-wired himself to the political and social ethos of his father.

Songs like "Think Africa" on Seun Kuti's just released debut album show that far from trying to distance himself from his father's legacy, he tucks himself comfortably in it.

Seun is so comfortable as the face of a new generation of Afrobeat that it's hard to believe that few took him seriously when he first proposed to his family that he take over the Egypt 80.

It was August of 1997.

Fela had just died.

KUTI: "Then the family has a meeting, my uncle, my elder brothers and sisters. My aunts. And basically, the family was saying, "To hell with the Egypt 80 band. We cannot keep funding the band. Fela is no longer alive. Who's going to listen to the band?" But here I am, sitting in the living room with the family of my dad, and they are basically telling the greatest band in Africa, "You are no more important. Just go away." And it just hit me. Because growing up, my dad used to always say, "Before even all of you, my band is the most important thing in this world to me." Even before the family, even before himself. The band comes first."

Seun Kuti and Egypt 80 perform "Think Africa":
Sean Kuti and Egypt 80 perform "Think Africa" at the Music Without Borders Series in Chicago's Millennium Park.

What Seun did next was surprising, given the context.

The young teenager spoke up.

KUTI: "So I said, "Can I say something?" They're like, "What?" And you know, in Africa, it's not the same as the way you Europeans treat your children. You say, "Junior." "Yes, Dad." "Come here." "No, Dad. I feel like going out with my friends." It doesn't happen that way in Africa. You don't talk back to elders. So it took a lot of summoning up of courage for me to say, "What if I keep playing with the band, and we keep what we make?" Exactly what I said. They said, "Well, you can keep what you make with the band, but don't expect any businesses from us because, you know, da da da da da da...." So, here I am, 10 years after."

Seun writes songs in the same way his father did: like a journalist watching things fall apart around him, and putting pen to paper immediately.

Little surprise then that with the corruption and violence swirling around Nigeria's oil industry, Seun Kuti would write a song called "Na Oil."

It may be sung in Nigerian pidgin English, but you can hear the anger and frustration.

WERMAN: " Let's talk about the oil track. What's going on in the Niger Delta? What do you see going on?"

KUTI: "A very vicious cycle. It's all about money. The government gets money from the companies. They bribe the elders of the land to appease the people. They in turn don't give the people anything. They keep it in their pocket instead. They leave their people suffering and crying. To me right now, I feel that violence is not really the answer to it, because even the so-called Movement of the Niger Delta, the so-called freedom fighters, are fighting for themselves. They kidnap people and make money, and spend it among themselves. Instead of taking that money and putting it into the community, putting it new schools, these so-called freedom fighters drive around and state-of-the-art SUVs, with the best clothes. They're just doing it for themselves basically. Because the whole of Africa is now in a kind of survival-of-the-fittest mentality. Nobody really wants to think about politics. Nothing. Everyone just wants to make money. Because they've made surviving so difficult."

Seun Kuti also inherits from his father a distaste for the former Nigerian president Olesegun Obasanjo.

Obasanjo's soldiers threw Seun's grandmother out a window during an infamous assault on Fela's home in 1977.

And now Seun is cautious about the 18 month old government of Umaru Yar'adua.

The current president was a close associate of Obasanjo, and Seun says he got to power the old-fashioned way.

KUTI: "It was not an election. It was a selection. They didn't elect anybody. Obasanjo just selected his best people and put them in power. You have to understand that we have men that still live in the country who are older than the country. Nigeria is only 47 years old. These men are 75-year-old, or 80-year-old men. They were there in the beginning. They created the chaos. They know what to do about... Right now they are cleaning up their money with our economy, hiding it. Cleaning up. That's what they're doing right now. People say Nigeria is getting better. Only the banks are improving. That is all that's improving. The banking. I'd rather bank in Nigeria than any other country in the world."

Seun Kuti briefly samples former President Obasanjo at the start of this song -- called Many Things.

And later in the song, Seun Kuti raps for the people.

KUTI: "Probably I'm not mentioning names or saying anything to anybody directly, but I'm speaking in general terms. You don't expect me to suicide bomb myself. Laughter is the best medicine for it. You say it, and you laugh. But it doesn't mean you don't think about what to do about it."