The Mind of Gil Scott Heron by Gil Scott‐Heron

The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron (subtitled A Collection of Poetry and Music) is a 1978 album by spoken word and rap pioneer Gil Scott-Heron. Like many of Scott-Heron's albums, the album's content primarily addresses political and social issues; however, The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron relies far more on his spoken word delivery than his other albums. Whereas much of the artist's earlier albums contained backup jazz-funk music from Brian Jackson, many of these tracks, which address contemporary issues such as Watergate, the pardon of Richard Nixon and the Attica Prison riot, are either live recordings or studio-recorded songs with little more than sparse drum backing or occasional instrumentation. Many of the tracks featured were included on previous Gil Scott-Heron albums.Due to the length of some of the pieces – "The Ghetto Code (Dot Dot Dit Dit Dot Dot Dash)" is nearly 13 minutes long, and four other songs are longer than 7 minutes – the album consists of only seven songs.One of the distinctive characteristics of Heron's poetry on this album is his use of chemical formulas to refer to certain people and events. For example, he refers to Barry Goldwater as "Barry AuH2O" and Watergate as "H2OGaTe".The original vinyl release of the album contained a 24-page booklet featuring transcriptions of 22 Gil Scott-Heron compositions. The CD release also features a different cover than the original vinyl release.