Gil Scott-Heron, Godfather of Rap, Rest in Peace

Gil Scott-Heron, some­times called the “God­fa­ther of Rap,” passed away in New York today. He was 62 years old.

Scott-Heron start­ed set­ting poet­ry to rhyth­mic jazz dur­ing the late 60s and and gained fame when he record­ed The Rev­o­lu­tion Will Not Be Tele­vised in 1971. Almost 40 years lat­er, he released his final album, I’m New Here, which includ­ed a track called Where Did the Night Go that’s fea­tured above. That same year, the New York­er pub­lished a pro­file – New York Is Killing Me: The unlike­ly sur­vival of Gil Scott-Heron – that takes you through a life that knew hard­ship from begin­ning to end, but which brimmed with cre­ativ­i­ty in between.

If this is your first intro­duc­tion to Scott-Heron’s record­ings, let us refer you to The Bot­tle, Win­ter in Amer­i­ca, Johan­nes­burg, and Ain’t No Such Thing As Super­man…

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