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The Last Poets’ Jalal Mansur Nuriddin Dies at 73

HeadlineJun 06, 2018

And legendary artist and musician Jalal Mansur Nuriddin—known to many as “the grandfather of rap”—has died at the age of 73. Nuriddin co-founded the spoken word group The Last Poets in 1968, soon establishing the group as a fixture of the civil rights movement. Nuriddin was an inspiration for Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Tupac Shakur and others. This is Jalal Mansur Nuriddin performing “White Man’s Got a God Complex.”

Jalal Mansur Nuriddin: ”I done paid enough rent
For this pad to be mine
But you just want to cheat me cause I ain’t your kind
Damn, can’t you see the place is falling down?
No, you can’t dig it cause you ain’t never around
Damn I’m so poor
I don’t know what in the hell I’m gonna do any more
Not from this day to the next
Cause the white man’s got a god complex

Jalal Mansur Nuriddin of The Last Poets has died at the age of 73.

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