 According to John Sobol, the jazz musician and poet who wrote "Digitopia Blues", rap "bears a striking resemblance to the evolution of jazz both stylistically and formally".Boxer Muhammad Ali anticipated elements of rap, often using rhyme schemes and spoken word poetry, both for when he was trash talking in boxing and as political poetry for his activism outside of boxing, paving the way for The Last Poets in 1968, Gil Scott-Heron in 1970, and the emergence of rap music in the 1970s.Precursors also exist in non-African/African-American traditions, especially in vaudeville and musical theater.