Gil Scott-Heron: your favorite rapper’s favorite poet.
Before there was rap, there was Gil Scott-Heron. He was a jazz artist, poet, and spoken word performer active in New York City from the 1970s until his death in 2011. You might not know him yet, but the words he wrote continue to influence rap artists to this day.
Scott-Heron was most well-known for his spoken word performances, which were often accompanied by jazz, funk, soul, or even just a simple hand drum beat. He was an active member of the civil rights movement; every word he wrote is deeply charged with the spirit of his political activism. His lyrics were also heavily influenced by his opposition to the war in Vietnam, Apartheid, nuclear power, and police brutality. His music provides his listener with an incredible view into American politics of the 20th century’s later decades. We can learn so much more about history when we hear it from someone who was experiencing it, rather than only through the well-worn stories which have become so familiar to us. Many of Scott-Heron’s tracks mention specific politicians, or policies, or public figures whose actions he wanted to discuss or respond to. We can know what he thought of, not only Richard Nixon or the Students for a Democratic Society, but Sprio Agnew or the Young Lords. Through the music he made, he provided future generations with a time capsule into the perspective of a Black American revolutionary.
There are a few songs that stand out amongst his discography as emblematic of his career. “Home is Where the Hatred Is” (1971) shows Scott-Heron's particular talent for setting heartwrenching poetry to his signature funky, soulful, jazz energy. But despite its upbeat sound, this track will skin your knees. It’ll leave your heart raw and bleeding. It is a heartbreaking admission of the struggles he faced with heroin addiction.
His most famous song is “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (1971). This track was where he originally coined that phrase, which has gone on to take on a life of its own. Scott-Heron said in an interview once that the message he wanted to promote with this song was that revolutionary spirit can only originate from within. It will not be created and marketed to Americans, he calls for Americans to find it within themselves. He writes, “There will be no slow motion or still lifes of Roy Wilkins/Strolling through Watts in a red, black, and green liberation jumpsuit that he has been saving for just the proper occasion.” This seminal song encourages all people to find the drive for liberation within them, rather than waiting around for NBC (a network he mentions specifically earlier in the song) to announce that revolution was happening. True revolution cannot be commodified, “You will not be able to lose yourself on skag [heroin] and skip out for beer during commercials.”
The spirit of this song has lived on in the decades since its release through references to it by rap artists taking inspiration from Scott-Heron. Travis Scott references it in his 2015 song “Apple Pie.” Kendrick Lamar, one of the most prominent rap artists of all time, referenced “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” during his Super Bowl Halftime Show when he said “The revolution ‘bout to be televised.” We live in a world where it increasingly feels like every minute of our lives is televised. It is a wildly different environment from the one in which Scott-Heron originally coined this iconic phrase. Lamar’s performance was the most viewed Super Bowl performance of all time, with over 133 million viewers watching it on television, and 152 million views on YouTube. In an age where the content that is ‘televised’ is increasingly created by individuals rather than solely broadcast network corporations, Lamar’s reference adjusts the meaning of the phrase to create room for our modern existence. The majority of people who watched Lamar’s Halftime Show had probably never heard the name Gill Scott-Heron, but they heard his words. And just like they did in 1971, those words struck a chord.
Another great example of Scott-Heron’s spoken word poetry is “Whitey on the Moon” (1970). “Whitey on the Moon” airs his grievances with the US’s eagerness to pour resources into the space race, while neglecting the need of it’s own Black communities. It’s an incredibly powerful poem performed to the beat of hand drums. What makes this piece so interesting from a historical perspective is the way it places the civil rights movement and the space race in such direct conversation with one another. The two movements, even though they were simultaneous, have been distanced from each other in our retrospective lens. Scott-Heron’s words inject a finger-on-the-pulse perspective on America in the early 1970s.
Just in case you need one more example to convince you that Gil Scott-Heron has had a profound impact on the rap scene: Kanye West has sampled him repeatedly. Whether or not you’re a fan of West’s work, it is nearly impossible to deny his status as one of the most prolific rap artists of all time. West’s “My Way Home” (2005) samples Scott-Heron’s “Home is Where the Hatred Is.” My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010) is one of his most popular albums. In it, he samples Scott-Heron's “Comment #1” repeatedly, a spoken word poem detailing Scott-Heron’s thoughts on the interactions and tensions between Black and White activist groups during the Vietnam War era (primarily referring to SDS, Black Panther, and Young Lords). The sample first appears in the track “Lost In The World.” Even more significantly, the vocals on the finale song on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, “Who Will Survive In America,” are composed entirely of samples from “Comment #1.” West takes lines from “Comment #1” and reorganizes them to a song that is no longer about the Vietnam war, but carries on Scott-Heron’s revolutionary spirit.
Scott-Heron’s activism and ingenuity has been inspiring artists for decades. Scott-Heron didn’t consider his work to have prefigured rap, he saw a stronger connection to the blues, jazz, and the Harlem Renaissance. But even though it might not have been what he intended, it is hard to overlook the ways in which his political poetry influenced the development of rap and hip-hop. When he passed in 2011 artists such as Eminem, Usher, Chuck D (of Public Enemy), and many more commented on Scott-Heron’s influence on their work and their admiration for his trail-blazing. Chuck D credited Scott-Heron for “setting the stage” for his generation of rap artists.
edited by Madison Esrey.
album artwork believed to belong to either the publisher of the work or the artist.