Album: Various Artists, Listen, White! the Sounds of Black Power 1967-1974 (Light in the Attic)

 

Andy Gill
Friday 24 February 2012 01:00 GMT
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Listen, Whitey! seethes with righteous anger and revolutionary determination.

It mingles excerpts of speeches by Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver, spirited polemical poetry by proto-rappers The Watts Prophets and Amiri Baraka, conscious soul-jazz from Gil Scott-Heron and Marlena Shaw, satirical broadsides from comedian Dick Gregory, and contributions from Dylan, John & Yoko and Roy Harper.

Particularly impressive are Last Poets founder Kain's "I Ain't Black", an incendiary avant-jazz riff on the phrase "black bastard", and The Original Last Poets' "Die Nigga!!!", an equally uncompromising rap whose punchline – "...so black folks can take over!" – pre-dates Chris Rock's similar distinction between "black people" and "niggers" by some three or four decades.

Download this: I Ain't Black; Die Nigga!!!; George Jackson; Dem Niggers Ain't Playing

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