Released in 1971 "Small Talk At 125th & Lenox" was the start of Gil Scott-Heron's distinguished forty-year recording career but this album is his simplest and most hard-hitting. For the most part it features him with three percussionists performing his poetry. The rhythmic backdrop and the style of the delivery makes it more than a spoken word album. It is a classic that stands head and shoulders above similar albums of the same date. It laid the basis for Scott-Heron's emergence as one of the leading figures of the black radical movement.