Quote by Abiodun Oyewole: “Words are free, it's how you use them that may cost you.”

Language doesn't cost anything to access — but what you do with it has real consequences. Speaking truth to power, naming injustice, or creating something genuinely original all carry risk. The freedom of expression is real; the price of using it fully is real too.

The Last Poets formed in 1968 in East Harlem, New York, amid the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the height of the Black Power movement. Their performances, which blended poetry and drumming, were considered so incendiary that they were kept off mainstream radio.

American poet and founding member of The Last Poets, the spoken-word group widely considered a predecessor of hip-hop. Formed in New York in 1968, The Last Poets combined African drumming and political verse to become the voice of Black radical consciousness in the late 1960s.