Hustlers Convention: Documentary unveils a lost classic
Hustlers Convention, released in 1973, is regarded as one of rap music's great forgotten classics, influencing hip-hop artists from Chuck D, Ice T and the Beastie Boys right up to Nas and Lupe Fiasco.
But few people have heard it and most don't even know it exists. A new documentary is hoping to rectify that.
It was a full moon / In the middle of June / In the summer of fifty-nine / I was young and cool / And shot a bad game of pool / And hustled all the chumps I could find...
A tale in rhyme of two street hustlers named Sport and Spoon, a catalogue of criminality told in the first person to a funky soundtrack supplied by Kool and The Gang.
The Hustlers Convention by Lightnin' Rod was released to very little fanfare more than 40 years ago. Lightnin' Rod was a pseudonym of black activist and founding member of The Last Poets, Jalal Mansur Nuriddin.
"The idea was to consolidate all the hustles and put them in one place at one time but have a moral of the story at the end," explains the now 71-year-old Nuriddin.
The album took the form of a toast, a form of rhythmic spoken poetry traditionally performed by prison inmates. The urban first-person narratives often portrayed heroic events in the teller's life.
"Toasts were part of the African-American subculture," explains Nuriddin. "It's a descendant of the old tradition of storytelling.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-33132365?post_id=100000433606031_996176007073510#_=_
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