The day in the mid-1980's on which I saw my first punk rock concert was memorable for a second reason. During the afternoon before I heard a the show, during a new wave & punk radio program, I heard the tune (not traditionally musical though it arguably is) accompanying this question. I'd not known of the group performing it, and their casual use of an infamous pejorative related to skin color AND their casual dropping of f-bombs were like nothing I'd ever heard. But the authority with which they'd spoken about political agitation and racial grievance intrigued me. At the concert I met a couple--she old enough to be my mother and he, enough to be my uncle--who'd heard of the profane men whose recording from over a decade prior stunned me earlier that day: The Last Poets. Had you heard of them before reading this question?

The Last Poets' first album, from which the cut with the previous question was taken, is a slice of (a?)musical, political and lyrical radicalism that must have shocked many listeners when it was released in 1970. But, it was one of those instances where provocative content--three angry, but often enough, also funny--African-American Islamic men reciting their poetry over drumming and little else--made for a hit. Their self-titled debut made the top five of Billboard Magazine's soul and jazz album sales charts as well as its top 30 pop-wise (all U.S.). The album"s popularity led to Right On!, a movie that basically recasts a Last Poets stage show in various New York City open-air settings. Have you seen it, or does it seem like something you'd like to see?

The group would eventually move from only using drums for musical accompaniment to allowing other instrumentation. It's what led to their adoption of jazz and calling their recitations jazzoetry. If you'd not listen to the 'Poets' mostly free verse (non-rhyming) poetry with merely drumming behind it, would you be more inclined to listen to it alongside some bop-styled jazz?

After a break starting in the late 1970's to the mid-'80's , the 'Poets returned, open to even more varied musical backdrops. It makes abundant sense--to me, a least--that they would embrace hip-hop, since the group's initial combination of percussion and poetry set some of the template for rapping as it's come to be know. But at least as sensical is their openness to reggae. It insinuates what they've been doing for decades into the lineage of dub poets such as Linton Kwesi Johnson and Mutabaruka and the toasters who've helped make dancehall reggae popular. Does reggae seem to you like an appropriate genre for The Last Poets' kind of artistry?

At an early 1990's inner city nightclub performance of black nationalist hip-hop group X Clan, where mine was the palest face in the place, I suggested to the concert's promoter that he bring The Last Poets to his town. I was amused that he thought I'd first recommended The Last Motors! Anyway, one thing connecting the two groups is their use of, at least for a while in each ensemble's existence, is the liberal use of "the n-word. " The difference seems to be that the 'Clan used it to describe someone of their color/ethnicity with swagger and confidence, whereas the 'Poets used it as a descriptor for an unenlightened or ignorant member of their people group. Even if I were of their background, I don't think I'd want to use the word at all. Since every person is, above all else, human, I don't see any trouble in discussing others' use of employing that epithet without using it myself. You?