I remember first getting into Scott-Heron about ten years ago. I had mentioned an affinity for Beat poetry and jazz to a prof one day after class, and suddenly here is Gil Scott-Heron on my stereo with his beautiful soul-jazz street poetry that touched true, authentic places.

When I first heard Pieces of a Man and Winter in America, I remember thinking: Who was this poet? Who was this seer singing, shouting, whispering, rapping, and rhyming from my radio? Why has he been hidden? Why had he been shut out of the mainstream, marginalized, uncelebrated? Where has he gone?

Scott-Heron, often referred to as the Godfather of Rap, is best known for the jazz/soul/poetry albums he released during the 1970s. His Pieces of a Man contained the culturally important (and still valid) “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and Winter in America gave us the swinging, grooving, funky-cool “The Bottle” 

He fell on hard times during the 80s and battled drugs, obscurity, and jail during the 90s and early 2000s. But his impact was felt. He was the original avatar of socially conscious, artistic, and forward thinking hip-hop.

And as we enter a strange and new decade we are given the understated yet shatteringly brilliant I’m New Here, Gil Scott-Heron’s first album in 16 years. Moving past soul-jazz of his most well known albums, I’m New Here is a sonically minimalist affair—awash in icy electronic tweets and clean atmospheric soundscapes.  Rather than detracting from Scott-Heron’s authentic and soulful voice, the minimalist electronic and modern hip-hop elements serve as a beautiful and poignant counterpoint.

And given the problems he’s faced over the past 20 years, Scott-Heron is different now as well.  These are hard words for hard times, yet there’s always the warmth and hope that Scott-Heron exudes in his voice—in the spaces between the words and music. The societal political concerns of the past have now given way to the personal politics of the spirit, the politics of the soul.

This is an extraordinary icy blue blues album that also manages to convey warmth and heart. In fact, there is more heart and truth on this album than you are likely to hear all year.

Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here won’t storm the charts (though it should), and it probably won’t win a bunch of awards (though it deserves to). Regardless, this is a major artistic statement as well as being an important return by a talented poet. I’m New Here is everything that is right with modern-day art, poetry, and music. It is electronic soul-art. You should own this album.

There is the personal and poignant “On Coming from a Broken Home pts 1 & 2” which bookend the album as a meditation to the fragility of “home”, what it means to be a man, and what it means to be a mother of men.

His stark, poetic, modernist re-imagining of Robert Johnson’s “Me and the Devil Blues” is an instant classic—hard and steely electronic blues for the 21^st century.

The title track, "I'm New Here" uses the sparse yet beautiful guitar theme from low-fi , indie artist (smog) to accompany Scott-Heron's words, his hard-won wisdom. This is a poem worth taking to heart.

“Where did the Night Go?” comes on as a shivering skeleton tone poem that perfectly articulates all the words we wish we could have written. 

“New York is Killing Me” swaggers in like some mystical and futuristic field holler. And this is the second album in a row I’ve reviewed that has commented on the desire for a return--the narrator retreating from the city, longing for a return to the quiet of home... “Gotta go back home, gotta go back home…”

“Running” is such an extraordinary poem that I can’t and won’t comment on it, and “The Crutch” is beautiful in such a deeply painful and naked way that I actually feel pain and sadness when I listen to this track.

It is here where he returns to “On Coming From a Broken Home” to end the album—Scott-Heron distinguishing between broken homes and broken people. A broken home does not necessarily break us—death does not necessarily break us. We can be stronger than that, he says.

We can.

We can.

--We were working on our lives, on our homes, dealing with what we had, not what we didn’t have. My life has been guided by women, because of them I am a man.” –Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron's website