The string of brilliant recordings that Gil Scott-Heron made from the 1970s to the early ’80s represent one of the most important runs of resistance music created by any artist in modern history — the call-to-consciousness proto-rap anthem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”; the allegorical ballad “Winter in America.” Perhaps only Bob Marley rivals him, and Marley’s music was resistance of a different sort: less politically literate, dreamier.

“I’m New Here” was recorded in the late-aughts, in a series of trans-Atlantic sessions between Scott-Heron and the record producer Richard Russell, an executive at the record label XL, who is based in Britain. It was Scott-Heron’s first album in 40 years not to feature a full band; instead it centered on the spare, gunmetal beats that Mr. Russell draped around Scott-Heron’s voice, fostering a sense of both claustrophobia and remove.

Mr. McCraven let those electronic tracks go. “I wanted to support his voice, and then try to do something of my own along with it,” he said. So he went straight for Scott-Heron’s vocal stems, then brought in other young jazz musicians to record some live tracks with him. Using his trademark production approach, Mr. McCraven spliced up the music they’d laid down — mixing in some old recordings by his father, the drummer Stephen McCraven, and ending up with a bristling crosstown junction of hip-hop, Afrobeat, European folk music and jazz.

The resulting album, “We’re New Again,” which XL will release on Friday, doesn’t recreate the loose Caribbean funk sound of Scott-Heron’s classic bands. Mr. McCraven’s instrumentals are a cosmopolitan tangle — founded in samples and syncretism — that belongs firmly to the fast-advancing 21st century.