Gil Scott-Heron, 1949–2011

Within hours of Gil Scott-Heron’s death, the tributes from rap superstars started pouring in. “He influenced all of hip-hop,” said Eminem. “We do what we do and how we do because of you,” said Public Enemy’s Chuck D. But Scott-Heron maintained that his rhythmic chanting, half spoken and half sung over jazz or R&B backing, was not rap or its precursor. “I don’t know if I can take the blame for it,” he said last year, even though he had long ago acknowledged that “certain poems of mine” were “more like songs than just recitations with percussion.”

Scott-Heron was born in Chicago to a Jamaican soccer player and his American wife, who separated when he was 2, said the London Telegraph. He spent most of his childhood in Jackson, Tenn., raised by his maternal grandmother, Lillie Scott. She died when he was 12, and he moved to New York to live with his mother. Awarded a scholarship to the private Ethical Culture Fieldston School, he also attended Lincoln University in Philadelphia, where Langston Hughes, an early hero, had studied. At 19, he published The Vulture, “a thriller about ghetto life.” Not long after, he published a poetry collection, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox.

Producer Bob Thiele gave the same name to a subsequent album of one of Scott-Heron’s club performances, which included a version of his most famous song, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” said RollingStone.com. With savage wit, he turned white America’s advertising slogans back on themselves, proclaiming that “the revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.” But anger wasn’t his only register. “The Bottle” tackled black alcoholism head-on, while “Pieces of a Man” mourned a life crushed by unemployment.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Prolific during the 1970s and early ’80s, Scott-Heron later lost years to drug addiction, said the Associated Press. He released a comeback album, I’m New Here, in 2010, but a New Yorker profile last year portrayed him smoking crack and falling asleep during an interview. “It’s one of the sad ironies,” said critic Nelson George, “that the man who made ‘The Bottle’ ended up a victim of his own abuse.”