The Last Poets share 'Two Little Boys' taken from forthcoming album ft. Tony Allen, Courtney Pine, Joe Armon-Jones + Kaidi Tatham
On the 29th November, the two remaining Last Poets, Abiodun Oyewole and Umar Bin Hassan, will present ‘Africanism’, the first Last Poets’ music since 2018’s critically acclaimed album ‘Understand What Black Is’, which earned favourable comparisons with their seminal works of the past.
Released via Africa Seven, the album features guest appearances from the king of Afrobeat Tony Allen, British jazz legend Courtney Pine, Joe Armon-Jones from Mercury Prize winners Ezra Collective and acclaimed multi-instrumentalist Kaidi Tatham. The Last Poets and friends breathe fresh energy, fire and outrage into some of the most enduring landmarks of the Last Poets’ career.
Considered by many to be the godfathers of hip hop, the Last Poets formed over 50 years ago, blending politically charged raps with tight Afro-centric rhythms, bringing Black consciousness to the fore. “The Last Poets’ mission was to pull the people out of the rubble of their lives,” wrote their biographer Kim Green. “They knew, deep down that poetry could save the people – that if black people could see and hear themselves and their struggles through the spoken word, they would be moved to change.” You only have to look artists such as Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest and Kendrick Lamar to hear their influence and they have been sampled by NWA, Biggie Smalls, Digable Planets, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Madlib and more.
The project started when the late Tony Allen, the Nigerian master drummer whose unique polyrhythms had driven much of Fela Kuti’s best work, dropped by Prince Fatty’s Brighton studio and laid down a selection of drum patterns. The sessions lasted just two days, with the hip hop godfathers exchanging the conga drums of Harlem for the explosive sounds of authentic Afrobeat. Guitarist Akinola Adio Oyebola and bassist Kunle Justice were called on to fill out the rhythm tracks, resulting in a perfect fusion of Nigerian Afrobeat and revolutionary poetry. However, their vision for the album was not yet complete. The Last Poets wanted to create a new kind of soundscape – one that reunited the Poets with the progressive jazz movement they’d once shared with musicians like Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders. It was at that point they recruited some of the most important figures in British jazz.
Opening with an explosive re-working of ‘This Is Madness’, initially penned by Umar for the Poet’s second album of the same name in 1971, the track is a call for freedom “by any means necessary,” and paints a feverish landscape peopled by prominent black leaders but quickly descends into chaos. “All my dreams have been turned into psychedelic nightmares,” he wails, over a groove now powered by Tony Allen’s ferocious drumming.
The sinewy rhythms of ‘Two Little Boys’ meanwhile, was inspired after seeing two young boys “stuffing chicken and cornbread down their tasteless mouths, trying to revive shrinking lungs and a wasted mind.” They’d walked into a restaurant in Harlem, ordered big meals, bolted them down and run out the door. No one chased after them, knowing they’d probably not eaten in days. Fifty years later and children are still going hungry in major cities across America and elsewhere. Abiodun’s poem hasn’t lost any relevance at all, and neither has ‘New York, New York.’ “Although this was written in 1968, New York hasn’t changed a bit,” he admits, except “today, people just mistake her sickness for fashion.”
It was many black people’s acceptance of the status quo that inspired ‘Just Because’, which like ‘Niggers Are Scared Of Revolution’, were included on that innovative self-titled first album released in 1970. Along with their revolutionary rhetoric, it was the Last Poets’ use of the “n word” that proved so shocking, but it would be wrong to suggest that they reclaimed it, since it never belonged to black people in the first place. There’s never any hiding place when it comes to the Last Poets. They use words like weapons, and that force all who listen to decide who they are and where they stand.
Oyewole, who was one of the original Last Poets who’d gathered in East Harlem’s Mount Morris Park in 1968 to celebrate Malcolm X’s birthday in May 1968, when he wrote the pioneering ‘When The Revolution Comes’ aged twenty, whilst living in Jamaica, Queens. “We were getting ready for a revolution,” he told biographer Kim Green. “There wasn’t any question about whether there was going to be one or not. The truth was many of us still saw ourselves as “niggers” and slaves. This was a mindset that had to change if there was ever to be Black Power.”
A longing for purity and time-honoured spiritual values underpins ‘Related to What’ while ‘Gash Man’ is inspired by a deep conversation Obiodun, and writer Amiri Baraka were having when they became distracted by a pretty girl walking by. “You’re a gash man,” Abiodun told him. Originally recorded for the Last Poets debut album, the poem inspired by that incident, is revisited on ‘Africanism’ and exposes the heartless nature of sexual acts shorn of intimacy or affection.
As global politics becomes more and more turbulent, The Last Poets’ rhymes and beats are more relevant than ever before. It's not just race or religion that hold us back, but an economic system that keeps millions in poverty and living in fear – a system born from political choice and that’s now become so entrenched, so bloated on its own success that it’s put mankind in mortal danger.
Tracklisting
‘This Is Madness’
‘Two Little Boys’
‘Just Because’
‘New York, New York’
‘Niggers Are Scared Of Revolution’
‘When The Revolution Comes’
‘Related To What’
‘Gash Man’
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