Poetic Obituaries: "I don't know if I can take

the blame for it," he [Gil Scott-Heron] said, preferring to call himself a "bluesologist" who drew on the traditions of blues, jazz and Harlem renaissance poetics.

Yet, along with the work of the Last Poets, a group of black nationalist performance poets who emerged alongside him in the late 1960s and early '70s, Scott-Heron established much of the attitude and stylistic vocabulary that would characterise the socially conscious work of early rap groups such as Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions, and has remained part of the DNA of hip-hop by being sampled by stars such as Kanye West.

from The Age: Unwilling 'godfather of rap' derided society's dominating forces

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