Gil Scott-Heron: “Spirits” (TVT/Mother Records)

Gil Scott-Heron’s big problem could well be that he’s too much the genuine article. He was a rapper back when what he did was called “spoken word music.” He was a protest singer when it was still possible to listen to such singers without feeling immediate affection for the forces of oppression. And, he was a raiser of black consciousness with his eyes on the prize of something more than a newer and snappier t-shirt slogan.

Twenty years ago, Scott-Heron released an album called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised on which he summarised, with uncanny perceptiveness, the main barriers that would be erected in the path of the black struggle for equality during coming decades. ‘Message To The Messengers’, the outstanding track on Spirits, harkens back to that classic statement in both style and content. Here though, he is primarily addressing what he calls “the 9 millimetre brothers,” the musical spokesmen for the current generation who have too often fallen into the very traps that he was signposting back in the early ’70s. It’s a simple but brilliant piece of work, the bloodied but unbowed voice of an authentic elder counselling the younger bloods.

Over a hypnotic, stone-killer groove, Scott-Heron urges them to “keep the nerve, keep the nerve,” but chastises them for their gullibility and how easily they’ve been dazzled by the glamour of drugs and guns. He warns against the appeal of “lies in a truthful disguise,” and calls for more respect, for community, for history and, most of all, for women: “Things don’t go both ways/You can’t just talk respect on every other song or every other day/What I’m speaking on here is the raps about the woman folk/On one song she’s your African Queen/On the next she’s a joke/You ain’t saying no words that I ain’t already heard but that ain’t no compliment/It only insults 8 people out of 10 and questions your intelligence.”

Elsewhere, unfortunately, Spirits is an uneven though often intriguing album, holed beneath the hull by some very ponderous ‘concept’ segments and an ill-conceived attempt to marry a Scott-Heron rap with a John Coltrane instrumental. For ‘Message To The Messengers’ alone, however, it’s an important proclamation and proof positive that there truly ain’t nothing like the real thing.

• Liam Fay