The Watts Prophets

The Watts Prophets
Also known as	Watts Prophets
Origin	Watts, California, United States
Genres	Rap, Hip-hop, Jazz, Spoken word, Poetry
Years active	1967–present
Website	http://thewattsprophets.org
Members	Richard Dedeaux Father Amde Hamilton (born Anthony Hamilton) Otis O'Solomon

The Watts Prophets are a group of musicians and poets from Watts, California, United States. Like their contemporaries The Last Poets, the group combined elements of jazz music and spoken-word performance, making the trio one that is often seen as a forerunner of contemporary hip-hop music. Formed in 1967, the group comprised Richard Dedeaux, Father Amde Hamilton (born Anthony Hamilton), and Otis O'Solomon (also billed as Otis O'Solomon Smith) (O'Solomon removed the "Smith" from his name in the 1970s).

Hamilton, O'Solomon, and Dedeaux first met and collaborated at the Watts Writers Workshop, an organization created by Budd Schulberg in the wake of the Watts Riots, as the Civil Rights Movement was beginning to take a new cultural turn. Fusing music with jazz and funk roots with a rapid-fire, spoken-word sound, they created a sound that gave them a considerable local following. They released two albums, 1969's The Black Voices: On the Streets in Watts and 1971's Rappin' Black in a White World, which established a strong tendency toward social commentary and a reputation for militancy. The group was unable to secure another record deal; a promising deal with Bob Marley's Tuff Gong label famously fell through. Unable to sustain success, the group has performed only sporadically since the mid-1970s.

In recent years, the group's profile has improved somewhat. The 1997 recording, When the 90's Came, found them in the studio with pianist Horace Tapscott, and a European tour reunited the trio with former collaborator DeeDee McNeil. In 2005, Things Gonna Get Greater: The Watts Prophets 1969-1971 combined the group's first two efforts, bringing them back into print for the first time in more than a decade.

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