I'm Overdosing on old Gil Scott-Heron tunes at the moment, and they don't get any funkier that The Bottle. Definitely Gil's biggest and most commercial tune, Gil signed a one album deal for the Strata East imprint, out of New York, in 1974 with Brian Jackson, and released the album Winter In America, which contained the original version of The Bottle. It was later reissued during the mid-1980s on Champagne Records in the United Kingdom. The track features Jackson's superb flute playing and Scott-Heron on keyboards, while singing and rapping about alcoholism, drug addiction, abortion, and incarceration, but it sure is funky.

Scott-Heron later said of the single's success and style, "Pop music doesn't necessarily have to be shit." Indeed!

See that black boy over there, runnin' scared his ol' man's in a bottle. He done quit his 9 to 5 to drink full time so now he's livin' in the bottle.

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