Kuti's pidgin English lyrics depict difficult conditions in the city, including a frenetic, multilingual trading market and inextricable traffic jams in Lagos' major intersections.

Confusion is a one-song Afrobeat album that begins with an entirely instrumental first half, which features free form interplay between Kuti's electric piano and drummer Tony Allen.

It leads to an extended mid-tempo section with Allen's polyrhythms and tenor saxophone by Kuti, who subsequently delivers call-and-response vocal passages.

In reviews since the record's release by EMI, the album was praised by music critics, who found it exemplary of Kuti's Afrobeat style and recommended it as a highlight from his extensive catalog.

After becoming dissatisfied with studying European composers at the Trinity College of Music in London, Fela Kuti formed his first band Koola Lobitos in 1961 and quickly became a popular act in the local club scene.

In 1969, he toured with his band in Los Angeles and was introduced by a friend to the writings of black nationalist and Afrocentrist figures such as Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver.

[4] Kuti, who plays electric piano, and drummer Tony Allen start the introduction out of tempo and exhibit abstract musical techniques, including dramatic free jazz interplay between their instruments.

[16] Kuti's lyrics depict the complicated, frenetic, and multilingual market of the Ojuelegba crossroad, and in doing so addresses what Nigerian historian Toyin Falola described as the "infrastructural nightmare of Lagos and the continued hegemony of the West in all aspects of African life".

[17] According to The Rough Guide to World Music (2006), the album uses a "hectic crossroads in Lagos ... as a metaphor to explore the problems of an entire corrupt nation".

[19] His lyrics decry what he viewed as the colonial mindset of some Africans and employ pidgin English, which was the lingua franca of most people in English-speaking West Africa; he sings the phrase "pafuka", which means "all over" or "finished", and the interjection "o" to add emphasis.

[15] Rob Brunner of Entertainment Weekly gave the album's reissue an "A" and viewed it as one of Kuti's best works, while Derrick A. Smith from All About Jazz cited Confusion as one of his "best statements on any instrument".

[27] Robert Christgau gave the two-album reissue an "A−" in The Village Voice, calling Confusion "one Fela song/track/album it would be a waste to edit ... the proof of Africa 70's presumptive funk.

[30] In his 2008 book 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, music journalist Tom Moon wrote that it is both one of Kuti's best albums and "a demonstration of just how rousing Afro-Beat's deftly interlocked rhythms can be.