The benefit is set for June 22 at Irving Plaza in New York City, just prior to the opening of the United Nations Special Session on HIV/AIDS.

The concert will support the efforts of Africa Alive!, an African-based network of youth organizations that promotes through entertainment safe sexual behavior and the prevention of HIV/AIDS.

Kuti is a vocal advocate for AIDS education and awareness, and for good reason. His father, the legendary Afrobeat band leader and political revolutionary Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, died of AIDS-related heart failure in 1997.

The U.N. Special Session runs June 25-27 and will be the first ever to address a public health issue.

“This crisis is ravaging our continent,” said Kuti. According to the U.N., more than 25 million of the 36 million people currently infected with the HIV virus live in Africa. More than 21 million people have died of AIDS since the 1980s and more than 75 percent of the deaths have been in sub-Saharan Africa.

Afrobeat and activism are indelible aspects of Kuti’s birthright. A member of his father’s band since the early-1980s, Kuti assumed leadership of the group when Fela was imprisoned by the Nigerian government in 1985. Following his father’s release from jail two years later, Femi formed his own band, Positive Force.

His latest album, Shoki Shoki, continues the work Fela began, presenting a harsh critique of Nigerian politics with an unfailingly funky beat. Kuti’s tour begins June 16 in San Francisco and makes 15 stops before wrapping in Chicago on July 14.