It is 11am at the St Martin's Lane hotel in Covent Garden, and you would hardly guess that the sleepy-eyed, pretty vacant, young black American in room 101, who stumbles away from the unmade bed to be interviewed, is probably the most important man in music today.
A fire in the vacant building left ugly black scars.
The movement took root on ground that mainstream civil rights organisations had largely left vacant, particularly in the black communities of America's deindustrialising northern cities.
The world outside was divided into two plains: the ground was a black so vacant you wondered if it was still there, and the sky, which was a dark luminous blue, was dusted with stars that burned too brightly.
A dozen blocks away, not far from a vast expanse of metal scrap yards and vacant warehouses, the sleek black-and-white cars glide past wooden skeletons for dozens of luxury town houses.
A4 More South Africa Evictions The government continued to demolish shacks erected by homeless blacks on vacant land outside Johannesburg, and some people complained that officials seemed to care more about landowners and investors than the poor.
