::NOTE:: This is an Adam's Rant. I made minor grammatical changes but I stayed true to his original essay in regards to content and formatting because it was that good when I first read it. Made me kinda jealous. I'd hate him if I thought jealousy was a good reason to hate somebody. Ladies, he's single and studying to be a doctor - get at him! ::END NOTE::
::ADAM'S DISCLOSURE::
Upfront disclosure of
political bias: Like most people I have a certain political viewpoint. Saul Williams is inherently political by
his own choice and design. Therefore, it is not possible to discuss Saul
Williams without discussing some political aspects of his work. So, this essay
is not making any pretense of neutrality or being unbiased. However, even if
you are a Trump supporter, please give Saul Williams’ art a chance or at least
listen to his ideas on media consumption and the effect it has on us. Think of
it as doing me a favor for being honest with you about my political bias. ::END::
"Critics want to mention that they
miss when hip hop was rappin’
Motherfucker
if you did, then Killer Mike'd be platinum
Y’all
priorities are fucked up, put energy in wrong shit”
- Kendrick Lamar, “Hood Politics,” To Pimp a
Butterfly
In “Hood Politics,” Kendrick Lamar
presents himself as a person who doesn’t feel that rap beef and rap politics is
important because the Earthly reality of growing up in Compton viscerally
demonstrated the comparative vapidity and meaninglessness of it. The reality of
his upbringing, his story, is more important than attacking other emcees.
However, with the above line he is drawing a distinction - rap politics is
bullshit but political rap is not. With these words he excoriates critics
claiming a lyrical and meaningful decline in rap music while Killer Mike is
consistently releasing dense, meaningful, politically charged tracks both as a
solo artist (“Reagan”) and as part of the duo Run the Jewels (“Report to
Shareholders” is a personal favorite). While Killer Mike’s political chops both
inside and outside the arena of music are unassailable, I come today to say that
Saul Williams is the purest embodiment of Kendrick’s point and he’s the best
artist you’re not listening to.
“Sing along when Niggy sings
Without you he'd be worthless, homeless,
Earth-less
Venus Hottentot, up in the circus freakshow
hear him speak so properly, cause every
word is measured against meaning”
-Saul Williams, “Niggy Tardust,” The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of
Niggy Tardust
I first heard
the name Saul Williams through his collaboration with Trent Reznor, which was
entitled "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust." It is also known
as “that album title you can’t say aloud in polite company because nobody has
ever heard of it.” The album was released on November 1, 2007 and I was 20
years old at the time. Ironically, I heard of it because Trent Reznor praised a
music sharing torrent site we had both apparently been a member of and he
discussed the project in an interview I was sent by my brother and my curiosity
was piqued. When listening to it, I wish I could tell you that I had a
revelatory experience, that the album changed my life. I wish I could tell you
that 20-year-old Adam was smart enough, had the context and desire to
understand the allegory and wisdom that had just been sonically dropped on him
from the mind of Saul Williams. I wish I could, but I can’t because I didn’t.
Instead, what I heard was a simple story, a clear and unashamed homage to David
Bowie’s excellent Ziggy Stardust character and albums. What I didn’t hear due
to the ignorance of youth was the social commentary that weaved effortlessly
through the music like poetry. I would not understand beyond a surface level
for another five years. Lines like the above are simple enough to get, ignoring
the Venus Hottentot reference for the moment, Saul is using the character to
comment on fame, much like David Bowie used the character of Ziggy Stardust to
create an act of apotheosis into a rock star. However, five years later I knew
who Venus Hottentot was and I realized Niggy Tardust was about the nature of
celebrity through the lens of race.
Hottentot Venus
was the freakshow attraction given to at least two known African women who were
toured throughout Europe in the 19th century. The best known of
these two women was Sarah Baartman. She was brought to England by the free
black man Hendrik Ceasars and the English doctor, William Dunlop. She was forced
to perform in freakshows, specifically displayed for her exaggerated sexual
characteristics and differences to European women. Saul Williams was not trying
to be obtuse with his meaning. The references to Sarah Baartmann’s stage name
and the freakshow were clear as day even when I was 20. I just didn’t know
about the horror of the Hottentot Venus and I didn’t bother to look it up. I,
unknowingly, had allowed my intellectual curiosity to lapse around age 20 and
it took a few years to return. When I listened to the album again five years
later I saw a new world of political and racial allegory I had not seen before
because I was willfully blind. "Niggy Tardust" was not a meditation on the
effects of fame, it was a frank and open calling out of the entertainment
industry through the lens of a black man. It stood and at every moment it
declared “This is a minstrel show.” Revisiting the album after all this time
was an enlightening and embarrassing experience. The song, “Reparations” was
always there and it loudly declares with a Trent Reznor produced industrial
backbone: “Call the police! / I’m strapped to the teeth, and liable to disregard
your every belief / Call on the law! / I’m fixin’ to draw a line between what
is and seems and call up a brawl / Call’em now! Cause it’s about to go pow! /
I’m standing on the threshold of the ups and the downs / Call up a truce! /
Cause I’m about to break loose / Protect ya neck, cause, son I’m breaking out
of my noose.” Saul Williams was not being subtle, he was hiding in plain sight.
There’s an expression in magic - “If you want to hide something, paint it red.”
Using the framing device of "Niggy Tardust," Saul Williams took his ideas on race
and fame and painted them red. He made them socially acceptable by creating a
“character” when the reality was Saul Williams was playing himself all along.
“My perspective on pop culture and how it may or may not
dominate ‘news’ issues- usually the way I think it’s most fitting to address
that is to address artists. If, in fact, it is a matter of what’s popular, I
mean that’s what pop culture is it’s just what’s popular, then our artists
should be more strategic. Our artists need to be more exposed, more educated,
thinking more strategically about ‘Oh, okay, how can I bring this issue to the
forefront…’”
-Saul Williams,
Interview
Saul Williams is
not a rapper. I have called him an artist consistently for a reason. The
aforementioned poetic nature and weave of "Niggy Tardust" is because, before it
was an album, much of "Niggy Tardust" was a book of poetry called The Dead
Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop. The reason Saul Williams
doesn’t occupy the same pop-cultural cache as Killer Mike is not because of a
lack of talent; it’s because he is always an artist and a poet first and a
rapper second. Every album he has ever made has been associated with a book of
poetry. This, combined with other ventures such as acting on stage, leads to
long gaps between the few albums Saul Williams does release. From 2007 to 2011
Saul Williams didn’t release a single album, he had a break between 2011 and
2016. The truth is Saul Williams is a hard artist to keep up with. This piece
isn’t a hipster tale of how I kept up with him, because I didn’t. Saul Williams
is a man who doesn’t release an album unless he has something he wants to say
to a lot of people. The above quote from an interview with 24/7 Hip-Hop is
clearly a personal mantra and mission statement. Saul Williams released Niggy
Tardust with Trent Reznor because he knew the collaboration would inspire
people to listen to it and his message. Saul Williams, perhaps more than any
artist ever, understands that silence (the sonic equivalent of negative space)
creates a framing for the use of sound. The silence amplifies the voice and
makes it louder in comparison and through the framing of silence the impact of
messages is stronger. When someone speaks quietly or not at all, and then
speaks with great passion and knowledge about something, it inspires the
listener. It demands attention and receives it.
“The message of entrepreneurialship is about what? Keep your
heart out of it, streamline it’s what Jay-Z says ‘I dumbed down my lyrics and
doubled my sales.’ …Is that selling out? Yes, I would say, unless, I mean because it’s
also the role of a poet to streamline ideas, right? Streamlining is not dumbing down.
Streamlining is taking the essence of one idea, the essence of another and
another, and getting rid of all the unnecessary fat in terms of wordage so it
ends up being something really impactful… We’re capable of taking in a lot. Me?
I’m frustrated by any executive or any artist who underestimates the
intelligence of the audience instead of feeding that intelligence, because what
it does because it warps our idea of what entertainment is or what it’s
supposed to be.”
-Saul Williams,
Interview
“Trump
is not shocking to me…. When you equate entertainment with escapism, what the
fuck does that mean for Bob Marley? What the fuck does that mean for Nina
Simone, or Fela Kuti, or Jim Morrison, or The Beatles, Bob Dylan? These cats
weren’t trying to escape the culture, they were digging in to what was
happening in the culture, they were saying ‘look at what the fuck [is going
on]!’ These are people who were counter-cultural, questioning authority,
questioning what’s going on. Whereas, now, we have a pop culture that’s
centered around rooting for the winner… If you look at the Meek Mill and Drake
situation people are like ‘I want the guy who’s winning to win.’ Not the guy
who comes from the actual fucked up situation, who might have something to say.
‘Nah, I want the guy who’s winning to win.’”
-Saul Williams, Interview
So, I’ve gone on for about 1600
words now about why Saul Williams is great, and if you’ve made it this far, I
commend you. I want to close on these two thoughts because more than any song
he’s ever wrote, more than any poem he’s wrote, they demonstrate something: Saul
Williams wants you to understand him. I’ve written about my inability to
understand when I was younger but that wasn’t Saul’s fault. I fell into the
trap of not being curious, not educating myself more. Unlike many artists, Saul
Williams doesn’t shy away from telling you exactly what his art means because,
as he said, the job of a poet is to streamline. He believes in the intelligence
of the audience and believes we should be challenged. He believes ignorance is
the root of our ills, and education and exposure to ideas and people are the
panacea. In the song “Burundi” off the 2016 album "Martyr Loser King," the lines
“Factories in China, coltan from the Congo / Smuggled to Burundi hidden in a
bongo…” These aren’t merely transitional lines, it is a flat statement of
provenance regarding the technology we use everyday such as smartphones. Coltan
is a mineral that contains high amounts of the element tantalum. Tantalum is an
excellent material for the creation of high energy density capacitors used in
devices like smartphones, produced in China by people working long hours for
depressed wages. Burundi officially denies having a coltan industry and
declares no coltan deposits; however, it has been implicated numerous times by
the UN in the smuggling of Congolese Coltan, which is mined by slave labor under
the whip of warlords. Saul Williams discusses many topics on the album "Martyr
Loser King" but this, to me, is the most impactful. He is unashamedly stating a
fact that many are unwilling to accept. Not only is suffering required in the
assembly of our iPhones, they are built with blood minerals. Saul Williams isn’t
hiding this in metaphor or abstract allegory, he is stating the plain fact for
us all to hear.
Saul Williams is the artist you’re
not listening to, but you should. I don’t mean that you should listen to him
because his music is great, but because he is a man who has something to say.
Listening to simply his music would do him, his message, and yourself, a great
injustice. His speech is a powerful, finely honed and targeted weapon. His
words combine the speaking ability and inherent poetry of Maya Angelou with
truly inspiring ideas and a message of self-education leading to
self-empowerment. He criticizes media harshly for being a distraction (earlier
and to a much greater degree than Childish Gambino in ‘This is America’) but he
doesn’t condemn the watcher. He asks the watcher to look at the media they
consume and be skeptical about its effect on the world and themselves. I love
Saul Williams, and if I were to somehow Forrest Gump my way into the presidency, I would beg him to be my Poet Laureate. I believe, personally, he is one of the
best American Poets of my lifetime. I’m glad I was able to share him today.
If you have an hour, listen to him at Google: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhDoD6xUxsw
