Fifty years is a long time to remain relevant. Most bands don’t last five. The Last Poets — the spoken word collective who emerged at a Malcolm X birthday commemoration in East Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park in May 1968 — are not most bands.
Understand What Black Is is the group’s first album of new material in more than two decades, released this month through Studio Rockers, the London independent label we’ve had the pleasure of working alongside in the past. That it arrives in 2018 — the year of the group’s own fiftieth anniversary — feels less like coincidence than necessity. Original members Umar bin Hassan and Abiodun Oyewole returned to the studio in 2016, prompted in no small part by the election of Donald Trump and the particular climate that preceded it. The result is a record that demands to be heard.
Produced by Benedic Lamdin of Nostalgia 77 and Brighton’s Prince Fatty — two of the more imaginative producers working in British jazz and dub — the album brings together ten tracks that draw on the group’s own journeys alongside the broader, unfinished narrative of racial struggle and the hunger for social change that defined their earliest work. The production is careful without being precious, giving the voices of Hassan and Oyewole the room they require. This is not nostalgia dressed up as relevance. It is the real thing.
The album was recorded across two continents: rhythms laid down at The Ironworks in Brighton, horns at the Fish Factory in London, vocals in New York. A remarkable cast of musicians contributed, among them Jason Yarde, Percy Purseglove, and Carlton ‘Bubblers’ Ogilvie, alongside backing vocals from John ‘Segs’ Jennings. An accompanying remix single features reworkings from Mala of Digital Mystikz and the estimable Dego and Kaidi, which should tell you something about the calibre of people paying attention.
The influence of The Last Poets on popular music runs deep — their work was sampled extensively by the likes of A Tribe Called Quest, Biggie, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg throughout the nineties. The new album carries the same weight. Understand What Black Is is out now on Studio Rockers.
