Pieces of a Man: A Gil Scott-Heron primer

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (from Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, 1970)
‘You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out’
How can we not start here? Largely overlooked upon its release, time has regarded the first track from Gil’s debut – a live album recorded in a Harlem nightclub – as one of the most enduring and commonly referenced in hip-hop. The transient political and pop cultural players who populate this stream-of-conscious proto-rap have faded in the rear-view (which was kind of the point), but his fist in the air narrative remains ever-prescient.

The Bottle (from Winter in America, 1974)
‘A dollar nine or a bottle of wine’
Borne from his observation that alcoholism is classless – as he watched folk of all professions line up outside his local liquor store with their empty bottles to get a discount on the next purchase – The Bottle was an unapologetic foreshadowing of Gil’s own run in with addiction and the prison system. Despite the heavy nature of its lyricism, the track’s driving Caribbean funk still kept the crowd moving every night that he dusted it down until his untimely passing in 2011.

Let Me See Your I.D (from Sun City, 1985)
‘The first time I heard there was trouble in the Middle East, I thought they were talking about Pittsburgh’
Back in 1984, offers were pouring in for western artists to play Bophuthatswana casino resort Sun City, and the E Street Band’s Steve Van Zandt was having none of that shit, deeming it complicit to South Africa’s apartheid rule of the time and encouraging others to boycott en masse. Enter: Artists United Against Apartheid. Recorded at hip-hop's apex, this track was a cross-genre fusion of trumpet solos and rugged verses (ranging from Miles Davis to Kurtis Blow) built for Gil to astutely muse over an ugly international hegemony that the mainstream press rarely dared to.

Message to the Messengers (from Spirits, 1994)
‘Remember; keep the nerve, keep the nerve, you talkin’ ’bout peace’
Unimpressed by the prevalence of gangsta rap but encouraged by the soapbox a new black generation had finally been afforded, Gil pointed out the absurdity of dog eat dog hate and sexism in a medium that was built for neither, then promptly dropped the mic and left them to it. Future visionaries like Black Star, Common and Flying Lotus, to name only a few, received the message loud and clear.

Me and The Devil (from I’m New Here, 2010)
‘And I say: hello Satan, I believe it’s time to go’
Steered by XL recordings honcho Richard Russell, Scott-Heron’s first studio release in 16 years arrived seemingly by stealth with this chilling post-industrial expansion on Robert Johnson’s 1937 blues standard. Returning to an environment where true protest music was somehow back to its most marginalised, what transpired to be Gil’s last record with his full participation felt like unfinished business; a dark-humoured exorcism of personal demons shot through with the redemptive optimism of a new day.