King of afro-beat, Femi Kuti was in the news for breaking Kenny G’s record for the longest single note held on a saxophone. While Kenny G’s record was set in 1997 while holding an E- flat note for 45mins 47 seconds, Femi did his in 46mins 38seconds and it was witnessed by a large audience which included Senator Ben Murray-Bruce, the Deputy High Commissioners of Netherlands and The United Kingdom at the New Afrika Shrine.





In a chat with Punch, he revealed why he broke Kenny G’s record.
In his words;
“I did not break the Guinness World Record; I broke Kenny G’s world record. There is still another record. I don’t know Kenny G, he is not my friend and we have never performed together. I have heard about him and listened to about two of his songs even though I don’t know their titles but I have never met him in person.
“Initially, when I did something similar to that and it was uploaded on Facebook, some people were making some comments like, ‘so what? Kenny G has done it before. He is a world record holder.’ Someone then checked and noted that Kenny G actually had a record of 45 minutes and 37 seconds. I said I was going to break it and the feedback I got was that it was not possible so, I tried and after the third attempt, I broke his record. On that night if they had told me there was anotherrecord of 47 minutes 05 seconds, I would have broken it as well but no one knew of that record. It was because it was Kenny G’s record that came up when we made an internet search. I was only 38 seconds away from the current world record; I stopped playing when everyone assured me that I was in 46 minutes and I went another extra 32 seconds to be sure that everyone’s time synchronised. So nobody was in doubt that I broke Kenny G’s record. I was just doing it to prove a point because anytime I hold a key for a long while playing the saxophone, people always mentioned Kenny G’s name. It made me wonder why they always had to compare us because it was not a competition for me. Since they were making it a deterrent to my performance, I decided to go after his record. Now the matter is resolved; no one can compare us anymore. When you have a performance, it is to enhance the creativity of the music and not to show off.”