ABSTRACT: PROFILE of musician Gil Scott-Heron. Scott-Heron is frequently called the “godfather of rap,” which is an epithet he doesn’t really care for.

In 1968, when he was nineteen, he wrote a satirical, spoken-word piece called “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” It was released on a very small label in 1970. It is the species of classic that sounds as subversive and intelligent now as it did when it was new.

Scott-Heron calls himself a bluesologist. He is sixty-one, tall and scrawny. Writer visits Scott-Heron at his apartment where he was watching a tape of the Rumble in the Jungle fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. “I like to see unbelievable odds because that’s what I’ve been facing all these years. When I feel like giving up, I like to watch this,” Scott-Heron said.

Some of the people the writer spoke with said they preferred to remember Scott-Heron as he had been before he had begun avidly smoking crack. Crack makes a user anxious and uncomfortable and, trying to relieve the tension, Scott-Heron would sometimes lean to one side or reach one hand across himself to grab his opposite ankle, then perhaps lean an elbow on one knee.

Scott-Heron’s voice has always been more of a declaimer’s voice than a singer’s voice. Scott-Heron has smoked cigarettes for decades, making his voice less versatile, but raspier and even more idiosyncratic.

Scott-Heron says that he writes songs and records them all the time, but he has made only two albums since 1982. (Before that, since 1970, he made thirteen.)

Regardless, Scott-Heron has returned to prominence lately, having released “I’m New Here,” which has brought him a new, younger audience. It is the result of the British hip-hop producer Richard Russell’s sending him a letter in 2005 asking him if he wanted to make a record. “I’m New Here” is a reverent and intimate record, almost more field work than entertainment.

Tells about Scott-Heron’s childhood and his education at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, where he was one of five black students among a class of a hundred, and at Lincoln University, in Pennsylvania.

Discusses the Last Poets, who, in the late nineteen-sixties in Harlem recited poetry while accompanied by conga drums. Considers his influence on hip-hop artists.

Scott-Heron was one of the first musicians signed by Clive Davis to Arista Records. He made nine albums for Arista. Writer interviews Monique de Latour, an artist who lived with Scott-Heron for three years beginning in 1997. Describes Scott-Heron’s drug use and money troubles. Also tells about Brian Jackson, who was Scott-Heron’s musical partner earlier in their careers.


The full-length article on Gil Scott-Heron will be featured in the August 9th issue of The New Yorker.