The Last Poets [Fuel 2000] [PA] (CD - 1970)

All tracks have been digitally remastered.

Often cited (along with Gil Scott-Heron) as the artists most directly responsible for the genesis of hip-hop music, the slam poetry trio known as the Last Poets emerged in late-1960s New York from the black nationalist wing of the civil rights movement. On their self-titled debut LP, the group's three vocalists--Omar Ben Hassen, Alafía Pudím, and Abiodun Oyewole--took turns declaiming their vivid and often politically charged compositions depicting ghetto life over sparse percussions by Nilaja. While a glaring lack of musical composition and loose adherence to rhyme and meter make the Last Poets' recordings much more in line with their Beat Poet predecessors, the unflinching observations of the inner city experience would come to be an enduring staple of hip-hop, while their consistently confrontational approach would later be echoed by groups like Public Enemy, X-Clan, the Coup, and dead prez. Arguably the group's best and most cohesive work, 1970's THE LAST POETS stands as a monumental piece of musical and cultural history.

If rap could be traced to one logical source point, this exceptional piece of vinyl would be it, without question. Though the strict adherence to syncopated rhythms and standard song structures are absent, all the elements that would later become the hallmarks of hip-hop by the early 1980s (and predictable fare by the 1990s) are here: vivid depictions of street level violence, vivid apocalyptic predictions of racial genocide. All that is missing are pointless party anthems. But running through all the songs on the Last Poets' debut is an urgent sense of the need for radical action in the nation as well as the black community. In addition to railing against the injustices perpetrated by white America, the Poets' comment on the economic and social devastation of drugs ("Jones Comin' Down," "Two Little Boys"), complacency in urban families ("Wake Up Niggers," "When the Revolution Comes"), the emotional release of sex ("Black Thighs"), and the weight of oppression that leads to hopelessness ("Surprises"). At the same time, they warn of the dangers of half-hearted commitment to revolutionary change: "don't talk about revolution until you are ready to eat rats." In the same manner that Marvin Gaye's landmark album What's Goin' On depicted the problems that doomed black culture, the Last Poets are now seen by many as prophets. But also like Gaye, the realization that the problems depicted on The Last Poets are now much worse marks the record as an unheeded warning, far more than just a piece of Black Power kitsch. ~ John Duffy

If rap could be traced to one logical source point, this exceptional piece of vinyl would be it, without question. Though the strict adherence to syncopated rhythms and standard song structures are absent, all the elements that would later become the hallmarks of hip-hop by the early 1980s (and predictable fare by the 1990s) are here: vivid depictions of street level violence, vivid apocalyptic predictions of racial genocide. All that is missing are pointless party anthems. But running through all the songs on the Last Poets' debut is an urgent sense of the need for radical action in the nation as well as the black community. In addition to railing against the injustices perpetrated by white America, the Poets' comment on the economic and social devastation of drugs ("Jones Comin' Down," "Two Little Boys"), complacency in urban families ("Wake Up Niggers," "When the Revolution Comes"), the emotional release of sex ("Black Thighs"), and the weight of oppression that leads to hopelessness ("Surprises"). At the same time, they warn of the dangers of half-hearted commitment to revolutionary change: "don't talk about revolution until you are ready to eat rats." In the same manner that Marvin Gaye's landmark album What's Goin' On depicted the problems that doomed black culture, the Last Poets are now seen by many as prophets. But also like Gaye, the realization that the problems depicted on The Last Poets are now much worse marks the record as an unheeded warning, far more than just a piece of Black Power kitsch. ~ John Duffy minimize