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Gil Scott-Heron
Gil Scott-Heron, the poet, singer and author who rejected the title often given him as the “Godfather of Rap” because he said rap “is aimed at the kids,” has died in New York City. He was 62.
He had spent much of the last two decades battling drug addiction and in and out of prison before releasing an album last year, “I’m New Here,” that brought him something of a comeback.
Doris Nolan, a friend of Scott-Heron’s told The Associated Press, “We’re all sort of shattered.”
From his first album, “125th and Lenox,” released in 1970, Scott-Heron was a unique and powerful voice in American music.
At a time when popular music was moving away from the anthems of protest of the ’60s, Scott-Heron, with his hard-edged but somehow tender, aching voice, gave an unflinching yet poetic look at the realities of inner-city life at a time when the hopes of the civil rights movement were battered in the anger of riots and the ravages of spreading drug addiction. –By LAUREN VANCE and DEAN SCHABNER
:: SOURCE: ABC.com ::..
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