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It's an unlikely pairing, this collaboration between Gil Scott-Heron (an icon of '70s black radicalism) and Jamie xx (a white, British, twentysomething dance-music producer). Reworking Scott-Heron's 2010 album I'm New Here, Jamie xx builds new tracks around texts and songs by the elder statesman of spoken word. Stylistically, it ranges from hip-hop to the low-end lurch of dubstep and U.K. bass music; Scott-Heron's gravelly voice proves the perfect foil for his remixer's broken beats and air of elegant decay. — Philip Sherburne Hear It Now!

Gil Scott-Heron never had a Top 40 hit, and certainly never had a platinum album. Yet when his death at age 62 was announced on the late afternoon of Friday, May 27, it immediately became a trending topic (and a "trending topic") across the Internet. His impact resonated beyond sales metrics and radio spins.

Ultimately, he'll be remembered as a pioneer of hip-hop music and the coiner of the phrase "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." The latter, which he first recorded as a spoken-word piece for his 1971 debut Small Talk at 125th and Lenox and then as a jazz-funk piece on 1972's Pieces of a Man, weaves around early-'70s iconography like old-school Civil Rights activist Roy Wilkins wearing red-black-and-green jumpsuits and the TV soap Search for Tomorrow. While the pop banalities he rails against have faded from memory, the poem endures as a timeless parable, and a reminder that the real world moves faster than any communication medium, corporation or government can anticipate.