Gil Scott-Heron: Small Talk at 125th and Lenox.

Small Talk at 125th and Lenox is the debut album from poet/musician/rap pioneer Gil Scott-Heron. Recorded live at a small club located on the corner of 125th and Lenox in New York City in 1970, the album is basically proto-rap. Social commentary poetry with musical (mostly percussion) accompaniment. Opening with "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", the album goes through fourteen tracks about poverty, violence, and the black experience in 1970 New York. While most of the tracks are poems, three of them, "The Vulture", "Who'll Pay Reparations On My Soul", and "Everyday" are more or less straight forward songs, a preview of sorts of the kind of music Gil Scott-Heron would start recording after this album. Included on this album is a track called "The Subject Was Faggots", a seemingly homophobic rant. This track can be taken as it seems, as an offensive rant, or it can be viewed as a young man's honest confusion and curiosity of a scene he doesn't understand.
The original album is out of print, but it is available as part of the three disc set, The Revolution Begins: The Flying Dutchman Masters , a collection of all three albums Gil Scott-Heron recorded for the label, as well as plenty of previously unreleased material.


Evolution (and Flashback)

Whitey On The Moon

The Vulture