The Real Rap (CD - 1999)

Essentially, this Recall collection compiles the first four Last Poets recordings on two discs. This is "real rap," to be sure. Many may regard Gil Scott-Heron as the "godfather of hip-hop," but the Last Poets were its true progenitors. Their spare, often hand-drums-only-approach into multi-voices poetry, call and response, African style chants, and radical politics gave musical voice to the righteously angry Black Power movement during the late '60s and early '70s. None of these men were professional musicians, they were neighborhood friends from the Bronx, hanging out on the same street that Dion did just ten years earlier. They came together as a project in poetry, in art, in experimenting with artistic expression that was raw, immediate, and undeniably in your face; they forced you to react. Nearly 40 years later, the sound of these tracks still gets the dander up, still moves the feet, and makes one uncomfortable enough to react. This is a fine compilation, and contains every important recording by the Poets. ~ Thom Jurek minimize