"The Bottle" by Gil Scott-Heron

Birthday wishes go out today to Gil Scott-Heron, the musical visionary who is credited as one of the fathers of spoken word poetry as well as a gifted musician in the jazz and soul idioms...

Best known for such deservedly incendiary works as The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and Whitey on the Moon (both taken from his 1970 debut album Small Talk at 125th & Lenox) The Bottle originally appeared on Scott-Heron's third album, Winter in America, from 1974. A trenchant commentary on alcohol abuse, The Bottle has been something of an underground hit ever since its release, although it did reach the #15 spot on the R& B Chart in America; its also been sampled by such diverse hip hop artists as De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers.
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