Back in the day, the Last Poets were the reigning princes of African-American performance poetry. They developed a loyal following with their forceful performance style, irresistible beats, and lyrics ...

There is a track that has become an unlikely earworm for me over the past few weeks. It’s called Bird’s Word and it isn’t really what you’d call a song in the traditional sense. It’s more a ...

FLINT, MI – “This is not a performance group,” said The Last Poets member, Abiodun Oyewole. “We are truthsayers. That’s what we’ve always been.” The intimate crowd of around 30 people listened with ...

Before A Tribe Called Quest, Public Enemy or the rapper Common, there was The Last Poets — one of the most influential spoken-word groups that pioneered the hip-hop genre. After releasing their first ...

‘These fellow Black artists who — at that time, it’s all new, it doesn’t exist yet — they said, “Black people don’t like poetry.” So I said, “They’ll like mine.”’ GYLAN KAIN, the Harlem-born founder ...

In celebration of National Poetry Month, Smoke the Mic is featuring poet and lyricist Umar Bin Hassan this Monday night. As the tale goes, Bin Hassan sold his sister’s record player to buy a bus ...