How the Watts Prophets Redefined Spoken Word and Invented Hip-Hop

I explore one of the most culturally significant albums of the 1960s.

This album review takes a closer look at The Black Voices: On the Streets in Watts, the spoken-word experiment that planted the seeds for hip-hop’s explosion.

Note: Due to issues embedding playable YouTube versions on mobile, I’ve opted for Spotify links instead. Not down with Spotify? Learn how to transfer the links to your preferred streaming service here.

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Genre: Spoken Word, Avant-Garde Experimental

Label: Ala Records

Release Date: January 1, 1969

Vibe: ✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿

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👉 Click the GIF to stream the album on your favorite platform

Most scholars credit a famous 1973 block party for giving birth to hip-hop, then seen as an underground movement primarily built around breakbeats, turntablism, and cool remove on the mic. But the genre’s conception, the seeds that would eventually fertilize a commercial behemoth and political soapbox of unprecedented proportions, actually happened eight years earlier. On August 11, 1965, 21-year-old Marquette Frye was pulled over by police in Watts, a South Los Angeles neighborhood that, to that point, had already earned a reputation as a resilient oasis for a growing Black middle class. Residents had already endured “White flight” blockbusting practices, racist legislation related to fair housing, and a militarized LAPD that, under the William H. Parker regime, was openly hostile to minorities.

After he failed a sobriety test and resisted an initial arrest, Frye was struck in the face with a baton by one of the officers in front of a crowd of onlookers. The six days of civil unrest that followed, which resulted in 34 deaths and over $40 million in property damage, were later characterized by Frye as a “revolt” or “overthrow,” instead of how it’s commonly described now. “It wasn’t a riot,” he told journalists in 1990. “That’s a bunch of crazy folk going crazy without reason. There was a reason. And I’ve always wanted to see some change around here. I wanted to see something good come of it all.”

Another man who was on the same page was Hollywood scribe Budd Schulberg, who founded the Watts Writers Workshop shortly after the revolt. “In a small way, I wanted to help,” he said later. “The only thing I knew was writing, so I decided to start a writers’ workshop.” The workshop ran from 1965 to 1973, when it lost its federal funding. Two years later, the workshop’s building, which included a 350-seat theater, was burned down by Darthard Perry, who later confessed that he did so at the behest of the FBI, which had covertly targeted the organization for years. Still, its legacy lives on in its literary achievements and sustained cultural influence, with the Watts Prophets as one of the primary drivers.

The collective was formed in 1967 by Richard Dedeaux, Fr Amde Hamilton (born Anthony Hamilton), and Otis O’Solomon (billed then as Otis O’Solomon Smith). Beginning with this album, 1969’s The Black Voices: On the Streets in Watts, they overlaid minimalist jazz and funk rhythms with a fiery brand of rapid-fire spoken-word poetry. The words, often profane and uncomfortably direct, paint an unflinchingly vivid portrait of a ruined community. The listening experience is still stark and startling today, as the trio uses repetition, wordplay, and symbolism as blunt instruments capable of landing painful blows. Whether it’s the deathbed visions of “Falstaff” or the apocalyptic treatise that is “Pimpin’, Leanin’ & Feanin,” the writing is built to shock and offend, not with needless, grotesque hyperbole, but, as the title makes clear, with real-life dispatches from street level.

The threads they pull at are, sadly, just as relevant now as they were then. On “Doin’ Things,” the Watts Prophets rail against corporate control mechanisms that are incredibly proficient at “Keeping you doing things/So you won’t have time to think.” Later, on “Saint America,” they critique the country’s misplaced loyalties and priorities:

A black baby cried in a Delta night
In the slum-slammed streets of Harlem
Cried from the pain of missed-meal cramps
While your astronuts circled Russia, the heavens & other such places
Munching on concentrated bits of specially designed food
None of your people, Saint America, came from the sky
They came from every land on earth

When he was interviewed in 2015, O’Solomon, who died in 2022, was asked what he thinks has led to repeated incidents of police brutality that continue to bubble up in the news cycle, from Rodney King to George Floyd. “I think if you’re accustomed to having certain things, a certain status, whether you’ve earned it or not, if you find out you’re going to lose it—it’s not that you’re going to have less than your fair share, it’s that you’re not going to have other people’s share,” he explained. “For a lot of white males especially, it’s tough.” Yet later in that same interview, he betrays an unexpected optimism about long-term race relations in America. “When people say racism will never go away, I don’t believe that.” To a degree, you hear that on this record, too. The men want to believe their country is capable of good, not evil. They want to hold on to the idea that it really can be the land of opportunity for Black and other non-White Americans, even when faced with evidence to the contrary.

As is so often the case, speaking truth to power doesn’t make you a lot of friends in industry circles. After this LP and their follow-up, 1971’s Rappin’ Black in a White World, the trio failed to secure another record deal. There was an “almost” in 1972, with Bob Marley’s Tuff Going imprint, but that never came to pass. For nearly two decades, their first two studio projects were out of print and considered rarities on the resale market. Thankfully, that availability has changed with subsequent reissues and the advent of streaming. These days, the Watts Prophets are slowly but surely staking their claim as the forefathers of hip-hop. By pushing the boundaries of spoken-word audio, they simultaneously evolved and distilled the art form to its essence. Beats, words, and an inescapable sense of place—all qualities co-opted by both sides of rap music’s coastal divide.

It’s difficult to quantify that influence without intuition, but it’s there and, for me, it’s undeniable. The urgency echoes throughout 1980s hip-hop classics from acts like Run-D.M.C, Eric B. & Rakim, and Boogie Down Productions, just to name a few. In particular, its DNA is heard in so, so many beloved West Coast LPs, ranging from Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly to N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton. In both those cases, there’s no pandering to the mainstream elite. No chasing crossover success. The central motive is simple: to take a stand. To shine a light on the same inequities that the Watts Prophets railed against all those years ago. In refusing to separate art from environment, those records became, oddly enough, more universal, not less. In the case of N.W.A, 80% of its estimated sales famously occurred in predominantly White suburbs. A bittersweet run-off effect, to be sure.

If DJ Cool Herc and his brethren built the first of many hip-hop houses, On the Streets in Watts is the concrete upon which that initial milestone sits.