Gil Scott-Heron - exclusive video

News broke last night of the death of Gil Scott-Heron, the influential writer, poet and musician, whose marriage to the politically charged spoken poetry, rhythm, propulsion, blues and soul textures paved the way for hip-hop (though he often reject this notion). The cause of death was not immediately made public, although his agent said he had taken ill shortly after returning from a trip to Europe. He was 62 years.

Scott-Heron began as a devotee of the poet and novelist Langston Hughes, the displacement of its Jackson, Tennessee hometown, where he was raised after being born in Chicago to attend Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where Hughes was registered. That's where Scott-Heron wrote two early novels, the vulture and the Nigger Factory, the first being published when he was only 19 years. He also formed the band Black & Blues with Brian Jackson, who became one of his most frequent collaborators in the 1970s.

His first album, 1970 Small Talk At 125th At Lenox, was recorded live at a nightclub at the certificate, with Scott-Heron (proclaimed on the cover as "a new black poet") by reciting his verse on fire support minimalist congas, piano and guitar. It contains two of the most famous works Scott-Heron "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" and it was a little bite of street level social commentary in which Scott-Heron contrast recent triumph of the Government of "Whitey On The Moon". landing on the moon with the very real problems that were left here on Earth ("Is all that money I made last year / To whitey on the moon?"). And "Revolution", which became even more popular after a full version re-recorded tape was released in 1971, offered a dizzying array of references to pop culture in its sly satire of a nation distracted by film stars and sitcoms and empty promises of consumption, he woke up (chorus and holder) becomes a reference for generations of activists, poets and musicians.