Gil Scott-Heron Had Sights on the Media

Gil Scott-Heron, dubbed the "godfather of rap" for his mix of poetry and music, died Friday in New York, his publicist at XL Recordings said. He was 62.

It was not immediately known what killed Scott-Heron, who was best known for the 1970 song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," a politically and socially charged song that examined the African American condition in America at the time. The song was banned by some radio stations.

Scott-Heron died at 4 p.m. at a New York hospital, said Lisa Gottheil, his publicist at XL Recordings.

Scott-Heron defined the genre, long-time friend and former bandmate Charlie Saunders told CNN. Saunders worked on Scott-Heron's 1970 debut album "Small Talk At 125th & Lenox."

Saunders, a percussionist, said the last time he saw Scott-Heron was about two years ago when he needed a place to stay.

"He came by our house to get himself together. He spent 4 to 5 days and then moved on," Saunders said.

Much of Scott-Heron's poetry and music reflected his struggles with drugs and alcohol.

Scott-Heron was not always a favorite of the masses, but he was of critics, such as dream hampton, who tweeted, "I grew up poor & w hiphop my gen began to strip shame from poverty. Before us, Gil reminded us that poor ppl are human.. . . Gil sang about health care, police brutality, nuclear proliferation, racism, marriage, hunger and hurt . . . Gil seemed sensitive to the point of being skinless. Yet he was strong."

Media images seemed never far away from his consciousness. Ben Greenman wrote in the New Yorker in 2009 after the death of venerable CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite:

"Gil Scott-Heron, the performance poet and proto-rapper, obliquely criticized Cronkite in his landmark piece 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' and often referred to the venerable anchor as 'Walter Concrete,' most recently in 'Let Me See Your ID,' which appeared on the 'Sun City' album, in 1985. As newspapers and magazines lament Cronkite’s passing and the shift from authoritative news anchors to radically decentralized, often unreliable Internet-based news, it’s worth watching this YouTube video of 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' set to a montage of assorted clips."

Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune: Gil Scott-Heron, soul poet, dead at 62

John Lewis, Uncut, Britain: Album Review: Gil Scott-Heron — I'm New Here

Scott-Heron was known for work that reflected the fury of black America in the post-civil rights era and also spoke of the social and political disparities in the country. His songs often had incendiary titles - Home is Where the Hatred Is, or Whitey on the Moon, and through spoken word and song, he tapped the frustration of the masses.

He referred to his signature mix of percussion, politics and performed poetry as bluesology or Third World music.

But then he said it was simply black music or black American music. "Because black Americans are now a tremendously diverse essence of all the places we've come from and the music and rhythms we brought with us," he wrote.

In a 2008 interview with New York magazine, he said he had been living with HIV for years, but he still continued to perform and put out music; his last album, which came out this year, was a collaboration with artist JAMIE XX, We're Still Here, a reworking of Scott-Heron's acclaimed I'm New Here, which was released last year.

Scott-Heron was born in Chicago on April 1, 1949. He was raised in Jackson, Tennessee, and in New York before attending college at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania.

Before turning to music, he was a novelist, at age 19, with the publication of The Vulture, a murder mystery. He also was the author of The Nigger Factory, a social satire.