For the first time in 35 years, Billboard\u2019s Hot 100 chart does not include a rap song among its top 40 hit records. Anyone who\u2019s been listening to the music for at least that long can list myriad reasons why that\u2019s now the case: all the beats sound the same, all the artists are industry plants, all the lyrics are barely intelligible etc. For hip-hop forefather Abiodun Oyewole, though, it boils down to this: \u201cWe embraced \u2018party and bullshit\u2019, my brother.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fifty-seven years ago, on what would have been Malcolm X\u2019s 43rd birthday, Oyewole cliqued up with two young poets at a writers\u2019 workshop in East Harlem\u2019s Mount Morris Park (now Marcus Garvey Park) to form what would become the Last Poets, a collective of bard revolutionaries. They outfitted themselves in African prints, performed over the beat of a congo drum and advocated for populism in their verses. The group has had many configurations over the years, but Oyewole, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin and Umar Bin Hassan abide as the standout members. The trio is all over the band\u2019s self-titled first album \u2013 which was released in 1970 and peaked at No 29 on the Billboard 200. Their follow-up album, This Is Madness, made them ripe targets for J Edgar Hoover\u2019s Cointelpro campaign against the emerging figures the then-FBI director deemed politically subversive<\/a>. Notably, Oyewole could not contribute to that album because he had been incarcerated for an attempted robbery of a Ku Klux Klan headquarters, serving two and a half years of a three-year sentence. (He was trying to raise bail for activists who had been arrested for striking back at the Klan.)<\/p>\n Though dubbed \u201cjazz poetry<\/a>\u201d at the time, the Last Poets\u2019 tight rhythms, insurgent message and prevailing emphasis on Black consciousness would lay the foundation (along with fellow beatniks Gary Byrd and Gil Scott-Heron) for hip-hop music. Everyone from Melle Mel to KRS One to Common has paid some kind of homage to the Last Poets in their work. Oyewole\u2019s \u201cparty and bullshit\u201d line, which came from the song When the Revolution Comes on the Last Poets\u2019 first album, would become the title and hook for the Notorious BIG\u2019s debut single<\/a>. Black comedians pay tribute to the Last Poets too with every one of their spoken word slam parodies<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Late last year, the Last Poets released an 11th studio album, Africanism, without Nuriddin (who died from cancer in 2018) that takes the some of group\u2019s most resonant poems and sets them to the Afrobeat stylings of the late, great Tony Allen \u2013 the genre pioneer who came to prominence directing Fela Kuti\u2019s band. \u201cI\u2019m blown away by the fact that Umar and I both said things that are extremely relevant today,\u201d Oyewole says. \u201cIt\u2019s so weird that these problems continue to exist.\u201d<\/p>\n At age 77, Oyewole remains as attuned to the big issues as ever. With Bin Hassan, also 77, looking on (his speech has been somewhat limited after he suffered a pair of strokes in the last few years), Oyewole let his opinions fly over the course of our hourlong interview.<\/p>\n On Zohran Mamdani<\/a>, a former wannabe emcee turned Democratic socialist, sweeping to victory in New York City\u2019s mayoral election, Oyewole says: \u201cThis is all in divine order.\u201d<\/p>\n On the escalation of political violence in Nigeria, a thorny issue Nicki Minaj clumsily waded into<\/a> during a surprise recent appearance at the UN, Oyewole says: \u201cWe need to recognize that we are one and the same people, Africa and the diaspora, and make that union a lot tighter.\u201d<\/p>\n Umar Bin Hassan and Abiodun Oyewole. Photograph: Last Poets<\/p>\n On the fall of Kanye West<\/a>, who is featured with Oyewole on the Common song The Corner: \u201cKanye got hooked on the bitches brew. He got stuck, strung out. I don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve seen Sinners, but Kanye West has been bitten.\u201d<\/p>\n After Martin Luther King\u2019s assassination in 1968, Oyewole says, \u201cI wanted to become a serial killer.\u201d In fact, some of those bitter feelings bubble back to the surface when Oyewole segues to the topic of Charlie Kirk<\/a>\u2019s death and rightwing efforts to recast Kirk as a civil rights martyr. \u201cIt\u2019s embarrassing to have all the flags flying half mast in honor of a racist,\u201d he says, \u201cof someone who insulted every Black woman when he said Maxine Waters, Michelle Obama and Ketanji Brown Jackson weren\u2019t smart. It\u2019s embarrassing that Black people would say: \u2018Well, I feel sorry for him.\u2019 There\u2019s nothing to feel sorry for.\u201d<\/p>\n Oyewole credits Last Poets co-founder David Nelson for challenging him to express that rage in couplets instead. Earlier this month, while performing on the Soul Train cruise with a lineup that also included the Isley Brothers, Oyewole told guitarist Ernie Isley that their hit song It\u2019s Your Thing inspired the first poem he ever wrote, What\u2019s Your Thing, Brother? \u2013 a greeting that Oyewole heard often in the 1960s among activist-minded Black New Yorkers trying to suss out one another\u2019s political bents. You better get a thing before you lose everything, the poem goes.<\/p>\n Abiodun Oyewole and Umar Bin Hassan. Photograph: Johnny Nunez\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The Last Poets\u2019 grounding in Black pride and political purpose became heirlooms that were carried forward in the hip-hop movement \u2013 that critical last word intended as much to rally listeners to the dancefloor as join them in common cause against political oppression. It\u2019s a conjoining of ideals that began in earnest with Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five\u2019s breakout The Message, which sets the story of the Bronx\u2019s 1980s-era crime and dereliction to synth rhythms and breakbeats. Over the decades, rap\u2019s practitioners have dutifully upheld the Black American oral tradition of fighting the power and passing down knowledge of self while also serving up plenty of dancefloor hits. Even Biggie followed up Party & Bullshit on his debut album with Things Done Changed<\/a>, a reflection on the harsh realities of his Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn community.<\/p>\n