saul williams: the inevitable rise and liberation of niggy tardust

To me, Saul Williams used to be “the guy in Slam“. I basically knew he was a spoken word poet and not much more. But then I picked up his self titled album and was blown away. To me, it was everything that hip hop should, or could, be, but due to choice, isn’t. Like angry and relevant and taking itself seriously, and not just acting as an ego-over-blown background for girls in red bikinis.

Since I also happen to be huge fan of Trent Reznor’s music, one might have assumed that I would be totally excited at the prospect of them working together. In fact, I was pretty darn skeptical about it. One reason might be that I’m a cynical sort of person who simply doesn’t do exited, but there was more to it. I was sincerely worried that Trent was either taking Saul for a ride in the old Porsche and was about as likely to actually finish the thing as he is of marrying Marilyn Manson wearing a pink tutu and hot curlers, or that he’d simply botch it up. I mean, even if he did thank Public Enemy way back on Pretty Hate Machine, to me, Trent has about as much street cred as my Mom.

But it seems that my fears were totally unfounded. This album rocks so hard you can feel the vibrations all the way to Kiruna. It spans from a cover of U2’s Sunday Bloody Sunday to NINsounding distorted guitars and muted noises to moments where I feel I’m back in the days when the boys in my school wore kangol hats and awesome was Public Enemy and Rakim on a ghetto blaster by the schoolyard. And yet it never feels nostalgic, because while you can feel the heritage both of a certain kind of rock and of old school hip hop, it’s very clearly a descendant of that music, and not an imitation.

Through its diversity, it’s not a record that is easy to label. It could be called hip hop, but it’s not just hip hop (it’s bigger than that).* It’s more like it contains a variety of pieces that may not have a common denominator, but that together form a full picture much greater than its parts. This is music that does much more than just sound good – it tells a story.

As usual, Saul addresses issues on race, social inequalities and inadequacies, not to mention general spiritual issues in a colorful language that overflows with images that’ll rock your world. I read a review (actually about the only one I found when googling for reviews) of it, where the reviewer pointed out the sad irony in that this music is in fact developed largely by a white guy from the Pennsylvania sticks.

To me, that argument sort of misses the point. If there is one thing this record is about, it’s not sticking to the roles that society provides for you – black thug, whore, lily white pure or what ever it might be – but instead being true to your true self and being all you can be despite the boundaries the world around you try to put on you. So while the record on one level is about being African American, on another level it’s about something much bigger – being human.

In fact this record has been on more or less constantly playing on my iPod since I downloaded it and if you don’t take the opportunity to download it when you can get it for free you’re an idiot, and if you’re too cheap to donate five bucks for it, then you’re an asshole. Like Saul said; it’s the price of a good latte.

* if you didn’t get that reference, there’s just one thing for you to do – go buy Saul Williams. Like NOW, bitch.

posted by: agneta