If hip-hop really did begin with this then it peaked at the earliest possible stage. Gil Scott Heron's angry polemic from 1971 is one of music's truly seminal moments, providing a blueprint for later generations of artists good and bad to crack their knuckles over and take to some logical conclusion.The words flowing from the mouth are succinct poetry speaking of civil rights and urban unrest, black consciousness and the banality of media, with scathing name-checks for the slippery and later discredited men in office at the time (Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew) thrown in.
It's hard to argue with the power of what's being said here, nor is it easy to resist tapping a foot and nodding to the groove that carries this whole protest message across to your freed and funky mind.
Gil Scott Heron - "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" mp3
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