Gil Scott-Heron

Pioneer of intelligent rap, acid jazz-meister, poet, satirist, soul man . . . Gil Scott-Heron remains a heavyweight presence in pop culture, despite the fact that he has delivered only two studio albums over the last quarter century. Back on the map with 2010's I'm New Here, featuring single "Me and the Devil", Scott-Heron has sparked renewed enthusiasm for his back catalogue, from the still-gripping 1971 proto-hip-hop audio molotov, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", to "The Bottle", with its exotic bass-line, soaring flute (provided by lynchpin collaborator Brian Jackson) and deft lyrical flow: a classic example of Scott-Heron's piercing, far-sighted poetic vision.

In Next Steps, Scott-Heron offers an early condemnation of apartheid.

The more we explore Scott-Heron's work, the more kaleidoscopic it turns out to be: a dizzying whirl of groove and insight. On 1974's "Winter in America" he mentions "frozen hopes", a phrase that echoes strongly in the era of Obama buzz-words, while the smooth-groovin' anti-apartheid cut "Johannesburg", offers further evidence of Scott-Heron's prescience, as it appeared nearly a decade before the Jerry Dammer-penned Special A.K.A release, "Free Nelson Mandela". "Message to the Messengers" — from 1994's Spirits — makes an impassioned argument for hip-hop responsibility with Shakespearean rhetorical finesse.

The policies and deceptions of of Tricky Dicky are given Scott-Heron's appraisal, in Deep Cuts.

All Scott-Heron's work is packed full of empathy and street-level truth . . . an essential humanity that underscores his sharpest observations and supports his ability to cut to the quick of any situation. Here we return to his 1970 debut Small Talk at 125th and Lennox — backed by little more than congas and handclaps he poses the question "Who'll Pay Reparations on My Soul" while asking us to consider the huge gulf between speechifying at the highest levels and inner city despair. His stunning satire on the Nixon administration, "The H20gate Blues", is mesmerising in its range, wit and frame of reference, while "Or Down You Fall" is typical of the vocal/musical/poetic artistry on 1971's Pieces of a Man.

Gil Scott-Heron was born in Chicago, April Fool's Day, 1949, (a twist of timing on which he has wryly commented), and his dad used to play football for Celtic, but don't let these colourful details distract you from the bottom line: his undisputed heavyweight status as one of rap's inventors. Somewhat crassly packaged by Arista in 1975 as "the black Bob Dylan" Scott-Heron also stirred into his creative persona elements of Bob Marley and John Lennon, and — all-round creative genius that he was (and remains) — left us awestruck by his talent for jazz vocals and instinctive, all-natural way with soul. It's amazing to think that, before he returned to the fray in 2010 with I'm New Here, his first album of original material in 15 years, some presumed that the mercurial author of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" had died. Thankfully, that turned out not to be the case.