If there is such a thing as ‘reissue fatigue’ then this music has never succumbed to it. Although made available numerous times in the past couple of decades, as its cultural significance has grown, the work is simply too vital to buckle under the weight of over-familiarity. Especially when one considers the prophetic nature of the title-track's lyric, a searing denunciation of mercenary media manipulation, in our contemporary era of fake news and alternative facts. Gil Scott-Heron's role as the great pathfinder to the rap generation is indeed crystal clear, but his artistic persona is impressively rich and wide-ranging. This overview of GSH's early 1970s golden period for Flying Dutchman really underlines just how startling a synthesis he made of so many areas of black culture, let alone music – jazz, blues, soul, spoken word, political discourse – to the extent that he was really able to take us right to the epicentre of the African-American experience, a space where a struggle for enfranchisement chimes with creative restlessness. These poems, raps and songs, from ‘The Get Out Of The Ghetto Blues’ to ‘Sex Education, Ghetto Style’ to ‘Pieces Of A Man’ are simply outstanding, a blueprint for whoever wants to find freedom in the groove and in the rhymes that ride upon it.