the Last Poets

the Last Poets, spoken-word group, formed in 1968, whose confrontational delivery and socially conscious lyrics in songs such as “When the Revolution Comes” were a forerunner to rap music and hip-hop. The group’s founding members were David Nelson (also known as Dahveed Ben Israel and Dahveed Nelson), Gylan Kain (also known as Kain the Poet), and Abiodun Oyewole (original name Charles Davis). The original lineup eventually split into two groups going by the same name, and numerous other members rotated in and out of both groups over the years, most notably Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, Nilaja Obabi, and Umar bin Hassan.

Formation and fractures

The Last Poets formed in Harlem in New York City, originating as a trio of poets—composed of Nelson, Oyewole, and Kain—who shared an interest in developing a new Black Nationalist poetry to respond to the assassinations of Malcolm X (1965) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968). Nelson’s vision was to present an image of Black unity and to expose the Black community’s enemies and oppressors. The group’s debut was on May 19, 1968, at an event in Harlem commemorating the birthday of Malcolm X. The three poets were accompanied by conga drummer Nilaja Obabi, who was performing with another group that evening but from then on became a part of the Last Poets. The founding members called themselves the Last Poets, having been inspired by South African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile’s “Towards a Walk in the Sun,” which imagines a revolutionary future when “The only poem / you will hear will be the spearpoint pivoted / in the punctured marrow of the villain.”

Internal disagreements quickly led to the Last Poets splitting into two groups, both going by the same name. One group consisted of Nelson, Kain, and Felipe Luciano, a Puerto Rican American poet and activist; the other consisted of Oyewole with two new members: Umar bin Hassan, who had moved to New York from Ohio with the express intention of joining the group, and Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, who, unlike the other members, wrote exclusively in rhyme. Obabi remained, recording and performing with Oyewole’s lineup.

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The Last Poets

Oyewole’s version of the Last Poets signed a record contract with jazz producer Alan Douglas to release The Last Poets in 1970. The album’s spoken-word parts were recorded in one take, recreating the sense of a live performance. It was one of the first records by an American group to publish lyrics on the album sleeve. (The first rock group to do so was the British band the Beatles, with their 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.) The Last Poets received little radio play but sold more than 300,000 copies, peaking at number 29 on the Billboard album charts. Notable tracks include “Niggers Are Scared of Revolution,” “Wake Up, Niggers,” and “When the Revolution Comes,” all of which exhort against African American complacency in the face of racism and oppression. The use of the term nigger throughout the songs was controversial, though the group claimed that it was not meant to be taken as a racist slur. In an interview with the Village Voice in 2022, Oyewole clarified that, in their songs, it meant “a misguided, discombobulated human being. Somebody who’s totally out of sorts, who does not know who he is, and has decided to take on ugly characteristics that should never have happened in the first place.”

The Last Poets not only received critical praise (rock critic Robert Christgau declared both the group and the album “Frightening and beautiful”) but also caught the attention of popular culture. In 1970, the same year of the album’s release, “Wake Up, Niggers” was featured in the film Performance, a drama directed by Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell and starring Mick Jagger, about a faded rock star who is pulled into the London criminal underworld. Even more notable was the reaction from Gil Scott-Heron, a young spoken-word artist who had seen the Last Poets perform at his college near Philadelphia that year. Their show inspired him to write and record “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (1971) as a response to “When the Revolution Comes.”

(Read Britannica’s article “Are Song Lyrics Poetry?”)

Right On! and This Is Madness

Meanwhile, the Nelson, Kain, and Luciano lineup was the subject of director Herbert Danska’s film Right On! (1970). Shot guerrilla-style, the film captures the Last Poets in live performances on the streets and rooftops of Manhattan. Neither the movie nor its soundtrack received the same level of attention as had The Last Poets album, but the film garnered positive critical attention on the film festival and university circuits in the United States and Europe. The Right On! soundtrack was the last release by the Nelson, Kain, and Luciano combination of the group.

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In 1971 bin Hassan, Nuriddin, and Obabi recorded the album This Is Madness, which includes the seminal title track “White Man’s Got a God Complex.” The album’s lyrics were so politically radical that the Last Poets became a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s COINTELPRO. By this time, Oyewole had left the group—and poetry—to engage in direct political action in Harlem. However, after being targeted by local police for his political involvement, he moved to North Carolina and enrolled at Shaw University in Raleigh, where he founded a Yoruba society. During an attempt to rob a Ku Klux Klan headquarters for money to bail out two society members who had been arrested in an earlier incident, Oyewole was arrested and subsequently incarcerated for larceny. He served less than four years and was eventually able to continue his bachelor’s degree program at Shaw University, first while in prison and then following his release.

Later albums and legacy

After This Is Madness, another lineup change occurred when poet Suliaman El-Hadi joined the group and bin Hassan left. The Last Poets’ next album was Chastisement (1972), which incorporates saxophone and bass with percussion into a sound they called—in the title of one of the album’s songs—“Jazzoetry.” Key tracks include “Before the White Man Came” and “Black Soldier.” Bin Hassan briefly returned to the group to record At Last (1973), which layers poetry over a greater variety of jazz instrumentation. In the meantime, Nuriddin released a solo album, Hustlers Convention (1973), under the name Lightnin’ Rod. Like the Last Poets’ group projects, Hustlers Convention had a major impact on the development of rap music, with Chuck D of Public Enemy describing it as “a verbal Bible.”

No new Last Poets albums were released until Delights of the Garden in 1977. By this time, Obabi had left the group (he died a few years later, in 1981), leaving Nuriddin and El-Hadi to experiment with teaming their poems with funk music and to share billing with the prominent soul and rhythm and blues drummer Bernard Purdie. Nuriddin and El-Hadi continued to perform as the Last Poets, but they released no more albums until 1984, when the avant-garde composer and musician Bill Laswell was recruited to produce Oh My People, which introduces a hip-hop sound featuring synthesizers and drum machines. The following year, Nuriddin and El-Hadi published the book Vibes from the Scribes, a collection of their protest poetry. The album Freedom Express was released in the United Kingdom in 1988 and reissued in the United States in 1990.

In 1993 Nuriddin and El-Hadi reunited with bin Hassan to appear as the Last Poets in John Singleton’s film Poetic Justice, which starred Janet Jackson and Tupac Shakur. That same year, Laswell produced a solo project album by bin Hassan, Be Bop or Be Dead, which includes new tracks as well as reworkings of classics from the early Last Poets’ albums. Oyewole, who by this time had earned a master’s degree in education at Columbia University and was teaching poetry, also features on the album.

In 1994 Nuriddin and El-Hadi released Scatterap/Home, the final Last Poets album to include either of them. (El-Hadi died the following year, and Nuriddin passed away in 2018.) Also in 1994 Laswell produced Holy Terror, which features yet another reconfigured lineup, this time composed of bin Hassan and Oyewole. Laswell and the two poets followed that up in 1997 with Time Has Come, which brought drummer Baba Don Babatunde on board and includes a collaboration with Chuck D on the track “Down to Now.” In 2005 the Last Poets memorably appeared as guest artists on Common’s acclaimed album Be, on the lead single “The Corner.” By the time of the release of the reggae-backed Understand What Black Is in 2018, the Last Poets were well-recognized for their impact on rap and hip-hop, having been described over the years as “the village elders of the rap world” and “the godfathers of hip-hop.” In 2019 the group released two albums: Understand What Dub Is and Transcending Toxic Times. In the 2020s Oyewole, bin Hassan, and Babatunde continue to perform as the Last Poets, often in the company of rappers and other artists whom they have influenced and mentored.