Search - The Last Poets :: Last Poets

Amazing, impassioned, seminal

S. Clark | 03/16/2000

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I was just a skinny little white backwoods hippie when this came out. It's taken me so long to realize how great this record is. Haven't been able to listen to any of the other junk from the drugged out hippie era since sobering up in the late seventies, but this album is a striking exception, it's appeal is timeless.Any group that calls the Grateful Dead "sanctimonious" (on their next album, "This Is Madness") gets my vote.The big drawback to this album is that it capitalizes on and perpetuates the modern urban black stereotype of inner city sleaze and horror. But at the time it seemed like this record might be a document of the end of an era of black degradation. Anyway, this record isn't all sensationalism, it really does give glimpses into another world. Unless of course you're a poor, inner city black, in which case this album might seem pointless and redundant.A lot is made of this ablum being a precursor of Rap. That may well be, but the tracks on this album have all the careful craft of poetry and use common english. I hate Rap. Rap strikes me, by and large, as just so much undisciplined, rambling rant that employs neologisms coined for 15 minute life spans of use. So it's a pity Rap wasn't more inspired by this album than it seems to have been. Otherwise, there would be more quality and less quantity of Rap churned out."

Rough, unintentionally funny, and inteeresting

Andre M. | Mt. Pleasant, SC United States | 08/28/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"In the pre-Public Enemy days when I was in college, my friends and I would buy used Last Poets albums and laugh ourselves sick at the wild, ranting, lyrics that would probably get censored on this review. At the time, we considered them too outrageous to take seriously and dismissed it as shock theater, whereas the Original Last Poets (Kain, Felipe, and David Nelson) were a bit more profound with their material (compare this album with the Original Last Poets' "Right On" and you'll see what I mean). However, this is far more meaningful that the cartoon militancy of the gangster rap of 20 years later. Either way, there is never a dull moment on this one. They do get redundant on the later albums, though. Listen and think."