LISTEN TO IT #32: NEW YORK KILLS ME
Jun. 2nd, 2011 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogAs some of you know, Gil Scott-Heron is gone.
Which is a shame – partly because of the debt that hip-hop owes to him, and partly because he’s the second person in this series this year to die shortly after releasing a comeback album (the first being Poly Styrene).
Scott-Heron released I’m New Here last year, his first album since 1994. It never made it to the racks here in HK, so I’ve only heard the tracks that are on the YouTubes. Like this one here:
I like them. It’s not quite as essential as classics like “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” or even “Whitey On The Moon”. But when yr early work is as seminal as GSH’s was, it’s always hard to live up to yr own past.
Anyway, I’ve been a fan since finding out who he was in the mid-90s (via college radio, of course), so it’s good that he was able to record one more quality album – especially after having put himself through so much in the last 16 years with drug abuse, jail terms and HIV.
Respect.
Commercial-free,
This is dF
Which is a shame – partly because of the debt that hip-hop owes to him, and partly because he’s the second person in this series this year to die shortly after releasing a comeback album (the first being Poly Styrene).
Scott-Heron released I’m New Here last year, his first album since 1994. It never made it to the racks here in HK, so I’ve only heard the tracks that are on the YouTubes. Like this one here:
I like them. It’s not quite as essential as classics like “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” or even “Whitey On The Moon”. But when yr early work is as seminal as GSH’s was, it’s always hard to live up to yr own past.
Anyway, I’ve been a fan since finding out who he was in the mid-90s (via college radio, of course), so it’s good that he was able to record one more quality album – especially after having put himself through so much in the last 16 years with drug abuse, jail terms and HIV.
Respect.
Commercial-free,
This is dF
