Be Bop Or Be Dead

UMAR BIN HASSAN: “Be Bop Or Be Dead” (Island)

Umar Bin Hassan is a founder member of The Last Poets, a Harlem-based group of poets and musicians formed in 1968. As David Toop states in Rap Attack 2: African Rap To Global Hip Hop: “They took streetcorner rap with its potential for verbal violence and used it as an assault on what they saw as Black apathy, self-exploitation and stereotyped roles.”

Along with Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets were seen as the godfathers of message rap, and listening to these tracks it’s not surprising why. Umar Bin Hassan has a declamatory, passionate voice which drives forward his potent lyrics with a hammer-and-nail-like quality. There’s no hiding from his poetry, it searches out its truth and strikes with flaming intensity.

‘Bum Rush’ deals with life and death on the streets: “You cry out to the streets but they don’t care. One morning they find you with your face in the mud.” ‘This Is Madness’, composed in 1971, drives forward on a rhinoceros dance rhythm, while intoxicating you with the white heat of its anger: “All my dreams have been turned into psychedelic nightmares with Rosemary’s baby pissing in my face and Tiny Tim sticking his mouldy penis into my bleeding mind.”

The album has been given a modern but sensitive production by Bill Laswell, shifting from funk to jazz to African, to give Hassan the beats he requires. But you get the feeling that even with a tin can backing these raps would still shine. Because Hassan is a poet of genuine substance and this is no better illustrated than on his 1970 composed ‘Niggers Are Scared Of Revolution’: “Niggers play football, baseball and basketball. While the White man is cutting off their balls.… I love niggers. Because niggers are me. And I should only love that which is me a part of me. I love to see niggers go through changes love to see niggers act. Love to see niggers make them plays and shoot the shit. But there is one thing I do not love. Niggers are scared of revolution.”

• Gerry McGovern