Nonetheless, the teen made a decision: Egypt 80 would not die with his father, and he would be the one to lead it.

"It would have been intimidating if I had thought about it," Seun Kuti, now 25, says, talking on a cell phone from his tour bus outside Vancouver, British Columbia. "It was hard. They were veteran musicians. I had to look up to them, and prove myself as well."

"But I respected and believed what my father stood for," says Seun, who sings in a deep, gravelly voice, and like his father and brother Femi, who's 20 years his senior, plays the saxophone. "And they saw that, and saw that I believed in the struggle. They knew that I didn't start doing it because I wanted to be famous or rich or whatever. I did it because I loved it."

The struggle to which Seun refers, and which is at the heart of his deliciously polyrhythmic debut album, Seun Kuti & Fela's Egypt 80, is the battle for "emancipation of the black race," he says. "We have a lot of troubles in Africa. Things that have gone wrong."

The album is full of issue-oriented organic dance grooves that concern themselves with foreign powers' designs on oil in Niger ("Na Oil") and the deaths of millions of African children from malaria ("Mosquito Song"). On "Don't Give That S- to Me," Kuti points fingers at past and present political leaders. "With colonization, white people were giving us brutality, lack of health care," the singer says. "Now, without colonization, we are having the same thing."

"I want to be someone who is speaking through my music," he says. "Music is a very powerful medium. Everyone in the world listens to music. And as artists we have the responsibility of getting these messages across."

Seun says he listens to "all kinds of black music." He says that contrary to rumor, he does not have a rivalry with his brother, though unlike Femi, who he says is a "cool dude," he chooses not to update Fela's classic Afro-beat with touches of hip-hop and modern R&B. "No, no, no," he says. "There is no need to update it. I play Afro-beat. The music I do is pure and natural and incredible on its own. It doesn't need help from any other genre."

Contact music critic Dan DeLuca at 215-865-5628 or ddeluca@phillynews.com. Read his blog, "In the Mix," at http://go.philly.com/inthemix.