Gil Scott-Heron’s I’m New Here is personal in nature, rather than political, and reeks of fatigue, if not perseverance. “Me and The Devil”, a reworking of a Robert Johnson Delta blues song, plays like a thick, lurching, dub lament. Despite substance abuse and legal problems, Gil has never sounded defeat in his music, but rather, defiance—keenly insightful, politically aware, contrarian anger. While he doesn’t have a lot to say here about the Bush wars, or Obama, he’s got a lot to say about the courageous role of women in broken families (“On Coming From A Broken Home”), and the idea of personal redemption, which traverses the entire record.
I’m New Here has been compared to the final recordings Johnny Cash made with Rick Rubin’s American Records. But whereas Cash recorded a wide spectrum of the American Songbook in his usual folk/country idiom, Heron’s songs here are in large part re-imagined in a score of contemporary electronic music genres—dubstep, traces of chillwave, trip hop—by producer and XL label head Richard Russell. I’m not always convinced of the purity of poet-jazzmen like Scott-Heron dipping into such waters, but do take great pleasure in the snapping jump-up blues of “New York is Killing Me”. This, along with the quiet acoustic cover of Smog’s “I’m New Here” work best.
Artist Rashaad Newsome’s Whitney Biennial video Five attempted to engage and re-contextualize underground black gay “vogueing” in much the same way Russell here attempts to take Scott-Heron’s essence and filter it into something that has contemporary relevance. Take it apart, put it back together as something new. I’m not sure such efforts are necessary.
There’s a scene in the 1972 D.A. Pennebaker and Godard film collaboration, One P.M., where Amira Baraka and his revolutionary poetic beat band shut down a Harlem street and jam with drums and multiple instruments while freestyling the sins of the West, practically into the face of a somewhat bewildered (and pleased) Godard. This is how I’ve always imagined Gil Scott Heron spending the ’70s. That the creator of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, “The Bottle”, and “We Almost Lost Detroit” is still here forty years on spitting poetry and engaging the musical culture is our gift. But Gil need not be “contemporary”, or gussied up, just given a proper band, a mic, and then recorded, thank you very much.
