HUSTLERS CONVENTION by LIGHTNIN' ROD

Feat. Last Poets / Bernard Purdie & Kool & The Gang Sampled by Beastie Boys & Roni Size.Lightnin' Rod is just one of the many pseudonyms used by Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, often referred to as the "Grandfather of Rap." A prolific wordsmith and orator throughout the 1970s, Nuriddin was one of the founding members of the influential poetry collective known as The Last Poets, who have been cited as one of the earliest influences on the development of hip-hop music, breaking ground for the genre with lyrical performances that were frequently political, and emphasized the African-American consciousness. Nuriddin's opus is arguably the first album he released as Lightnin' Rod: a concept album fusing poetry with jazz-funk titled Hustlers Convention. A record which told the gritty, and unabridged stories of two fictional pimps, against a backdrop of urban sprawl and decay, against an instrumental foundation of swaggering rhythms and grooves, provided by top shelf contributors like Kool & The Gang and Billy Preston. Hustlers Convention was an integral part of hip-hop's timeline of development, and though it never received the credit it's long been due, it's considered something of a Holy Grail among crate diggers, and a wealth of sampling content for the likes of hip-hop heroes like Wu-Tang Clan, Madlib, & Digable Planets, and electronic wizards like Aphex Twin, and The Prodigy.