The son of a Jamaican soccer player (who once played for Glasgow Celtic), Gil
Scott-Heron was mostly raised in Jackson, Tennessee before moving with his
mother to The Bronx in New York. At university in Pennsylvania, he met long-time
collaborator Brian Jackson, forming the band Black and Blues and started writing
novels, with his first book The Vulture published in 1970. The same year
Scott-Heron released his first album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, with a
loose, spoken-word format addressing issues of homophobia, consumerism and black
revolutionaries that included his hugely i...