Water No Get Enemy

The B-side of Expensive Shit was recorded with Africa 70 at Arc Studio in Lagos in 1975, with Tony Allen on drums, Fela on tenor and alto saxophone and electric piano, and a trumpet solo by Tunde Williams. AllMusic describes a bleating horn section over bass, keyboards and drums, with wordless chanting that sets up the call and response before Fela's solo opens the jam. Rolling Stone heard it slow the album down to a celebratory strut.

Sung in Yoruba and Pidgin, its title comes from a Yoruba proverb about the power of nature, roughly that nobody hates something as useful as water. Pitchfork's Paul Cooper found it more philosophical than political, with the motion of water standing for the way people deal with each other. In 2020 The NATIVE heard its lines on water's uses as a song for the hand-washing months of the pandemic.

Later life

setlist.fm records Fela playing it at Brixton Academy in London in 1992, and it is sung in the second act of the musical Fela!. For the 2002 tribute album Red Hot + Riot, D'Angelo, Femi Kuti, Macy Gray, Questlove and the Soultronics recorded it at Electric Lady Studios with Nile Rodgers and Roy Hargrove. WhoSampled lists 24 samples, among them Common's Pops Rap III. Both uploads in the hypersongs web are the same 1975 studio recording: one from the estate's official channel, the other a fan's transfer of the Knitting Factory vinyl reissue.