The music awards ceremony takes place on February 12, 2012 in Los Angeles

Hear the influential musician read a chapter about the death of John Lennon now.

'The Last Holiday: A Memoir' comes out on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Photo by Mischa Richter

A memoir by the late Gil Scott-Heron, The Last Holiday, will be issued January 16 by the publishing house Canongate, as Wire reports.

Soul singer Bobby Womack reveals how a phone call from Gorillaz helped rekindle his career, and TV presenter Jonathan Ross hails the unlikely cartoon group

The roll-call of Gorillaz collaborators over the last decade includes Danger Mouse, Ibrahim Ferrer, De La Soul, Kano, Lou Reed, Mark E Smith, Snoop Dogg, the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Mos Def, Shaun Ryder and Paul Simonon and Mick Jones. But arguably the most rewarding relationship has been between the band and the great Bobby Womack.

In an interview to celebrate Gorillaz's 10th anniversary, the 67-year old soul singer reveals how an offer to work with the band helped him return to the studio. "I'd never heard of them. I'd just come off a heavy drugs scene and I'd been out 20 years," Womack says. "I stopped wanting to be a part of music when the Monkees retired."

"One day I just said to myself," he continues, "if I'm still here, I got to be here for a purpose â€' and the purporse started with tying up with Gorillaz. We did this song Stylo in New York and immediately all the fear went out the way."

It was Womack's daughter who helped persuade him to work with the group when she found him, much to her surprise, listening to their album.

"I says, 'Is that a sin?' She says, 'Nah Dad, that's the hottest group in the country!' I said, 'I'm just listening to them becuase they want me to...

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Earlier this week, we learned that Drake samples Jamie xx's remix of Gil Scott-Heron's "I'll Take Care of U" on the Rihanna-featuring title track from his new album Take Care. According to VH1, Rihanna's enlisted some xx help of her own-- she samples the xx's "Intro" on a track called "Drunk on Love" on her upcoming album Talk That Talk, which is out November 21.

Listen to a preview of "Drunk on Love" at Popjustice.

Continuing our new series in which Guardian and Observer writers pick their favourite albums â€' with a view that you might do the same â€' Dorian Lynskey says consider yourself ... warned!

To find, at an impressionable age, a record that not only expands your sense of what music can do but offers a new way of reading the world, is a remarkable privilege. For my 16-year-old self, undergoing a political awakening, the musical epiphany was Public Enemy's 1990 album Fear of a Black Planet but its predecessor is the group's stem-to-stern masterpiece and still the most exciting album I have ever heard.

White Britons like me were thrown a bone by this fiercely pro-black band in the shape of the first track, in which future Radio 1 rave ambassador Dave Pearce introduces the band at the London date of the 1987 Def Jam tour. After the ominous siren and Professor Griff's declaration, "London, England, consider yourselves warned!", I was already on the edge of my seat. Public Enemy's international ambitions and focus on live performance were just two reasons why, even as they gave me a passion for hip-hop, they always felt bigger than hip-hop. Leapfrogging rap's usual emphasis on local identity, they saw the bigger picture and couched it in suitably omnivorous music.

Chuck D describes Public Enemy as an "information portal": a dry term but an accurate one. Nation of Millions is so jammed with...

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Rapper performs his track 'Lost In The World' at the ceremony

Kanye West was among those who paid their respect to spoken word artist  and "bluesologist" Gil Scott-Heron at Harlem's Riverside Church on Thursday.

Photo by Mischa Richter

Over the weekend, we lost the poet and soul singer Gil Scott-Heron; he died in New York on Friday at the too-young age of 62. And as Black America Web reports (via the Daily Swarm), well-wishers will be able to celebrate Scott-Heron's memory at a memorial service tomorrow morning. The service is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. at New York's Riverside Church, and there will also be a public viewing in the evening at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home, located at 81st St. and Madison Ave.

Click here to read Pitchfork's Scott-Heron appreciation by Nate Patrin.