2011 continues to be a bad year for losing influential musicians. Hip-hop, soul and jazz pioneer Gil Scott-Heron has left us. He passed away on May 27th after falling ill after a tour of Europe. He was 62.
Scott-Heron grew up in Tennessee and went to college on a literature scholarship. He published his first book, The Vulture, in 1970 and in college, he met Brian Jackson, who he would go on to record with during the 70s and 80s. His first album, Small Talk, came out in 1970 and laid the ground for the eventual insurgence of hip-hop, fusing spoken word with jazz, soul and funk and talking about social and cultural issues.
He released music throughout the 70s and into the 80s, with his usual political and social commentary, using the backdrop of Brian Jackson's jazz and soul as the music for his words. He stopped recording in 1985 after being dropped from the Arista Records line up, but continued to tour. He released an album, Spirits, for TVT Records in 1993, which included his critique of hip-hop music, "Message to the Messengers".
After two prison stays in the 2000s for drug possession, Scott-Heron released I'm New Here in 2010 on XL Records, his first album in over 15 years. This was followed with a remix album with Jamie XX called We're New Here in 2011.
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