One listen to any Gil Scot-Heron album and it’s clear to see that the man was way ahead of his time and was an extremely insightful artist/poet. One look at him in the last years of his life (before he passed away in 2011) and it’s clear to see that his physical well-being dove dramatically from where it was in the 70’s, but his insight never left him. How could it be that such an intelligent man could reach such an all time low?

It’s often been said that geniuses are often on the verge of being insane. Not that Gil seemed insane, nah, not by any means, but I always thought it was genius how he carved his controversial poetry into musical masterpieces and I wonder if the reason that he was drove to numb the pain of life with drugs was because he was able to see the world and our society through such an untarnished lens. Since he had no mud on his glasses so to speak, he was able to see the ugliness that lies across the surface of America like a thick bed of toxic smog. That’s enough to drive a man crazy, when you realize that you are almost powerless if you’re the only one around you who…