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A1ZJHEG6Z69QL3Me And The Devil213760mp3:s/production/tracks/6c8063208ce2ad7bd385978ae8d0ac1f1a33d7b5-562726545?e=1267667457&h=9b1c6941f89d625f836c0de29d28f04dI'm New HereHYPERLINK_ALBUMNOT_IN_CART
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Me And The Devil video
Gil Scott-Heron - 'Where Did The Night Go' Video from his new album I'm Not Here, available 2.9.10
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At a Glance
Birthname: Gilbert Scott-Heron Nationality: American Born:Apr 1 1949 (60 years old)
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GIL SCOTT-HERON
‘I’M NEW HERE’
THE NEW ALBUM RELEASED ON FEBRUARY 9, 2010 ON XL RECORDINGS
Without doubt one of the most important voices in 20th century music, Gil Scott-Heron has been called a Vietnam-era Langston Hughes, a proto-rap pioneer, and - offensively but not inaccurately - the black Bob Dylan, someone whose unfailingly sharp and ironic eye spared neither black-power phonies or scheming presidents. In 1971 he laid out the blueprint for the whole rap genre with his slinky, bad-as-fuck anthem “The Revolution Would Not Be Televised” – on which the then 23 year old poetically dismantled… Read more(please enable JavaScript to read more)
This biography was provided by the artist or their representative.
GIL SCOTT-HERON
‘I’M NEW HERE’
THE NEW ALBUM RELEASED ON FEBRUARY 9, 2010 ON XL RECORDINGS
Without doubt one of the most important voices in 20th century music, Gil Scott-Heron has been called a Vietnam-era Langston Hughes, a proto-rap pioneer, and - offensively but not inaccurately - the black Bob Dylan, someone whose unfailingly sharp and ironic eye spared neither black-power phonies or scheming presidents. In 1971 he laid out the blueprint for the whole rap genre with his slinky, bad-as-fuck anthem “The Revolution Would Not Be Televised” – on which the then 23 year old poetically dismantled the entire 70s culture – while throughout a career spanning five decades, Scott-Heron’s deep, soulful voice spoke of nukes, Reaganomics or apartheid, always from deep inside the tradition. “There are 500 shades of the blues,” he told a club audience on ‘74’s Winter In America. “There’s the I-ain’t-got-me-no-money blues. There’s the I-ain’t-got-me-no-woman-blues. There’s the I-ain’t-got-me-no-money-and- I ain’t-got-me-no-womanblues - which is the double blues.” Back then, the club crowd laughed and singer-
poet went into a razor-sharp satire of Nixon’s rogue’s gallery. Now, thirty-six years later - after hip-hop’s total corporatisation of spoken-word, the nation’s rightward lurch, and his own troubled path through jails and addiction – Gil Scott-Heron could easily sing his own brand of blues: The I-can-out-rhyme-Kanye-West, I-can-out-write-Cormac-McCarthy, I’m-a-60-year-old, ex-con genius blues. And we might reasonably assume that I’m New Here, his first album in 13 years, will reflect the bitterest man on earth. Ten seconds of the title track sets things straight. “I did not become someone different,” he declares with gnomic gravity. “That I did not want to be.” He speaks a few more lines over the nodding acoustic guitar of Pat Sullivan, from Oakley Hall, then, giving it the full weight of 60 hard years, gently the hopeful chorus: “No matter how wrong you gone/You can always turn around.” It’s one of many highlights on an album that sees Gil Scott-Heron sounding as vital as ever; a record that reveals something unexpected at every turn; one that sees Scott-Heron pushing, probing and testing the boundaries just as he always has. Alongside his I’m New Here collaborator – producer and XL Recordings head Richard Russell – Scott-Heron has made an album that eschews the cosy arrangements and retrospective leanings one might expect from an artist over forty years into their career. Instead. I’m New Here sees Gil Scott-Heron still looking forward, still challenging conventions and expectations. On much of I’m New Here, Scott-Heron reflects on his life and this moment with his trademark vocal power and insight, sharing his visions among Russell’s flickering, electronic soundscapes which at various times conjure up thoughts of Burial and The xx, as well as a host of hip-hop influenced sounds. Against the low, buzzing miasma of “Crutch,” Scott-Heron observes a sidewalk junkie from both inside the addict’s head and out: “His eyes half-closed reveal his world of nod/A world of lonely men and no love, no God…” Against the metallic pulse of “Running,” he narrates a cold-sweat, 3 a.m. epiphany: “Because it’s easier to run/Easier than staying and finding out you’re the only one/Who didn’t run.” And, on the blues holler of future single “New York City is Killing Me,” he manages to sound like a raw-throated blues singer from a ‘30’s field recording and an existential narrator trapped in some post-industrial wasteland. Occasionally the electronics are stripped right back – as they are on the beautiful, heartfelt “I’ll Take Care Of You” – or on “I’m New Here”, a cover of indie-band Smog, of all things, where Scott-Heron’s weathered baritone completely owns the lyrics, transforming them with the force of own history. At other times in stark contrast, they’re ramped right up – just listen to the crashing, hip-hop beat and primal vocal boom of “Me And The Devil”. Elsewhere, along with brief ruminations and tape-recorded insights, Scott-Heron sings over the airy, funk arrangements that recall his ‘70s work, given a modern day reboot by Russell. But through all of it runs the thoughtful, provocative and still rebellious voice
of Gil Scott-Heron. Long after bringing the ‘90s British rave scene into global fame with The Prodigy, XL head Richard Russell has become arguably the most groundbreaking independent force in the music industry, releasing records byeveryone from The White Stripes, to M.I.A. to Devendra Banhart, Vampire Weekend, Dizzee Rascal and Radiohead. Connect those dots and you get a good sense of why Russell first made contact with Gil Scott-Heron In Rikers Islands Prison Facility in June 2006 with the proposal of making a new album together. Russell has been an occasional artist and producer throughout his time as a label head and the possibility of collaborating musically with a personal hero was too exciting to ignore. It would turn out be an ideal fit for Scott-Heron too, as an artist who has remained consistently relevant throughout his life and lately, almost too much so. He now looks out on an America much like the one he saw in the Nixon-Reagan eras, only with the volume cranked. The 2000 election victory was a cartoon of Reagan’s pseudo-populist triumph in 1980 (which then prompted Scott-Heron’s song “B Movie.”) The economic meltdown is a disaster-film ‘70s recession. Iraq is a crack-buzzed Vietnam. The revolution will be streamed. But on I’m New Here, which was started in 2007 but mostly recorded in New York over the last twelve months, Scott-Heron speaks less as prophet of doom than as the empathic social portraitist of ‘70 songs like “Peace Go With You Brother,” or “Your Daddy Loves You.” On “I’m New Here,” or “On Coming From a Broken Home,” you hear the huge, banged-up heart that shows the only genuine motivation any activist or artist should have, a bone-deep, unsentimental love for humanity. “If I hadn’t been as eccentric as obnoxious as arrogant as aggressive as disrespectful as selfish, I wouldn’t be me,” he says, on one brief interlude. “I wouldn’t be who I am.” And who is exactly is that? Is Gil Scott-Heron - as they’ve said about everyone from the Last Poets to Lou Reed - the founding father of rap? No at all. Just the smart rap. Just the soulful, socially aware, verbally dexterous style of artists like Public Enemy, Mos Def, and Kanye West, who, born in 1977 and raised by an English prof mom, probably heard Gil Scott-Heron before he heard the Sugar Hill Gang and later, like countless other rappers, sampled him. (Scott-Heron returns the favor by borrowing some from West’s “Flashing Lights” for the misty backdrop to “On Coming From a Broken Home.”) But this songwriter is also well represented in the sharp, honest songwriters in today’s indie- and folk-rock margins and there’s the slightly ominous possibility, hinted at in the second chorus of “I’m New Here,” that Gil Scott-Heron now, after a 40- year-career, may be hipper than any of them: “Turn around, turn around, turn around,” he gently sings. “You may come full circle/And be new here/Again.” ‘I’m New Here’ track list:
1. On Coming From A Broken Home (Pt. 1)
2. Me And The Devil
3. I'm New Here
4. Your Soul And Mine
5. Parents (Interlude)
6. I'll Take Care Of You
7. Being Blessed (Interlude)
8. Where Did The Night Go
9. I Was Guided (Interlude)
10. New York Is Killing Me
11. Certain Things (Interlude)
12. Running
13. The Crutch
14. I've Been Me (Interlude)
15. On Coming From A Broken Home (Pt. 2)
This biography was provided by the artist or their representative.
One of the most important progenitors of rap music, Gil Scott-Heron's aggressive, no-nonsense street poetry inspired a legion of intelligent rappers while his engaging songwriting skills placed him square in the R&B charts later in his career, backed by increasingly contemporary production courtesy of Malcolm Cecil and Nile Rodgers (of Chic). Born in Chicago but transplanted to Tennessee for his early years, Scott-Heron spent most of his high-school years in the Bronx, where he learned firsthand many of the experiences which later made up his songwriting material. He had begun writing before… Read more(please enable JavaScript to read more)
One of the most important progenitors of rap music, Gil Scott-Heron's aggressive, no-nonsense street poetry inspired a legion of intelligent rappers while his engaging songwriting skills placed him square in the R&B charts later in his career, backed by increasingly contemporary production courtesy of Malcolm Cecil and Nile Rodgers (of Chic). Born in Chicago but transplanted to Tennessee for his early years, Scott-Heron spent most of his high-school years in the Bronx, where he learned firsthand many of the experiences which later made up his songwriting material. He had begun writing before reaching his teenage years, however, and completed his first volume of poetry at the age of 13. Though he attended college in Pennsylvania, he dropped out after one year to concentrate on his writing career and earned plaudits for his novel, The Vulture. Encouraged at the end of the '60s to begin recording by legendary jazz producer Bob Thiele -- who had worked with every major jazz great, from Louis Armstrong to John Coltrane -- Scott-Heron released his 1970 debut, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, inspired by a volume of poetry of the same name. With Thiele's Flying Dutchman Records until the mid-'70s, he signed to Arista soon after and found success on the R&B charts. Though his jazz-based work of the early '70s was tempered by a slicker disco-inspired production, Scott-Heron's message was as clear as ever on the Top 30 single "Johannesburg" and the number 15 hit "Angel Dust." Silent for almost a decade, after the release of his 1984 single "Re-Ron," the proto-rapper returned to recording in the mid-'90s with a message for the gangsta rappers who had come in his wake; Scott-Heron's 1994 album Spirits began with "Message to the Messengers," pointed squarely at the rappers whose influence -- positive or negative -- meant much to the children of the 1990s.
In a touching bit of irony which he himself was quick to joke about, Gil Scott-Heron was born on April Fool's Day 1949 in Chicago, the son of a Jamaican professional soccer player (who spent time playing for Glasgow Celtic) and a college-graduate mother who worked as a librarian. His parents divorced early in his life, and Scott-Heron was sent to live with his grandmother in Lincoln, TN. Learning musical and literary instruction from her, Scott-Heron also learned about prejudice firsthand, as he was one of three children picked to integrate an elementary school in nearby Jackson. The abuse proved to much to bear, however, and the eighth-grader was sent to New York to live with his mother, first in the Bronx and later in the Hispanic neighborhood of Chelsea.
Though Scott-Heron's experiences in Tennessee must have been difficult, they proved to be the seed of his writing career, as his first volume of poetry was written around that time. His education in the New York City school system also proved beneficial, introducing the youth to the work of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes as well as LeRoi Jones. After publishing a novel called The Vulture in 1968, Scott-Heron applied to Pennsylvania's Lincoln University. Though he spent less than one year there, it was enough time to meet Brian Jackson, a similarly minded musician who would later become a crucial collaborator and integral part of Scott-Heron's band. Given a bit of exposure -- mostly in magazines like Essence, which called The Vulture "a strong start for a writer with important things to say" -- Scott-Heron met up with Bob Thiele and was encouraged to begin a music career, reading selections from his book of poetry Small Talk at 125th & Lennox while Thiele recorded a collective of jazz and funk musicians, including bassist Ron Carter, drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie, Hubert Laws on flute and alto saxophone, and percussionists Eddie Knowles and Charlie Saunders; Scott-Heron also recruited Jackson to play on the record as pianist. Most important on the album was "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," an aggressive polemic against the major media and white America's ignorance of increasingly deteriorating conditions in the inner cities. Scott-Heron's second LP, 1971's Pieces of a Man, expanded his range, featuring songs such as the title track and "Lady Day and John Coltrane" which offered a more straight-ahead approach to song structure (if not content).
The following year's Free Will was his last for Flying Dutchman, however; after a dispute with the label, Scott-Heron recorded Winter in America for Strata East, then moved to Arista Records in 1975. As the first artist signed to Clive Davis' new label, much was riding on Scott-Heron to deliver first-rate material with a chance at the charts. Thanks to Arista's more focused push on the charts, Scott-Heron's "Johannesburg" reached number 29 on the R&B charts in 1975. Important to Scott-Heron's success on his first two albums for Arista (First Minute of a New Day and From South Africa to South Carolina) was the influence of keyboardist and collaborator Brian Jackson, co-billed on both LPs and the de facto leader of Scott-Heron's Midnight Band.
Jackson left by 1978, though, leaving the musical direction of Scott-Heron's career in the capable hands of producer Malcolm Cecil, a veteran producer who had midwifed the funkier direction of the Isley Brothers and Stevie Wonder earlier in the decade. The first single recorded with Cecil, "The Bottle," became Scott-Heron's biggest hit yet, peaking at number 15 on the R&B charts, though he still made no waves on pop charts. Producer Nile Rodgers of Chic also helped on production during the 1980s, when Scott-Heron's political attack grew even more fervent with a new target, President Ronald Reagan. (Several singles, including the R&B hits "B Movie" and "Re-Ron," were specifically directed at the President's conservative policies.) By 1985, however, Scott-Heron was dropped by Arista, just after the release of The Best of Gil Scott-Heron. Though he continued to tour around the world, Scott-Heron chose to discontinue recording. He did return, however, in 1993 with a contract for TVT Records and the album Spirits. ~ John Bush, All Music Guide
Gil Scott-Heron (born April 1 1949) is an American poet, musician, and author known primarily for his late 1960s and early 1970s work as a spoken word soul performer and his collaborative work with musician Brian Jackson. His collaborative efforts with Jackson featured a musical fusion of jazz, blues and soul music, as well as lyrical content concerning social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles by Scott-Heron. The music of these albums, most notably Pieces of a Man and Winter in America in the early 1970s, influenced and helped engender… Read more(please enable JavaScript to read more)
Gil Scott-Heron (born April 1 1949) is an American poet, musician, and author known primarily for his late 1960s and early 1970s work as a spoken word soul performer and his collaborative work with musician Brian Jackson. His collaborative efforts with Jackson featured a musical fusion of jazz, blues and soul music, as well as lyrical content concerning social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles by Scott-Heron. The music of these albums, most notably Pieces of a Man and Winter in America in the early 1970s, influenced and helped engender later African-American music genres such as hip hop and neo soul. Scott-Heron's recording work is often associated with black militant activism and has received much critical acclaim for one of his most well-known compositions "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". On his influence, a music writer later noted that "Scott-Heron's unique proto-rap style influenced a generation of hip-hop artists".
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