Interview with Saul Williams In Chuck Klosterman’s bestselling 2005 book Killing Yourself To Live, he travels to historic locations where both famous and infamous musicians died prematurely, ultimately coming to the harrowing conclusion that the best move an artist can make in their career is to die a sudden death. A decade later, as poet/rapper/actor/writer Saul Williams embarks on his own travels from Illinois to Ohio to Georgia to Tennessee to Hungary to Switzerland to France to Germany to Ireland to Austria to Turkey to Holland to Finland in literally a month, I cannot help but think that the only way Williams would ever receive his proper credit as one of the most gifted artists of all time (I say that without a mustard seed of hyperbole) is if he were to use all the frequent flier miles he has racked up to leave this Earth. But nobody wants that, because despite him being one of the most known unknown iconic figures of the last 20 years, the world needs people like Williams to spark the masses. [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/186834720″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”100%” height=”450″ iframe=”true” /] First off, this article is going to be f###### long, and even if only one person reads it from top to bottom instead of navigating through more interesting pieces like BuzzFeed’s 29 Times “The Sims” Was Accidentally Hilarious or EliteDaily’s Why The Girl Who Unfroze You In Freeze Tag Is The One Who Got Away, it will be well worth it to me. In the 26 seconds it took me to search for and post the above video, I estimate that Politico has posted approximately 30 articles about all the latest in the Donald Trump circus and precisely one thousand people have posted a sadistic Kardashian-related comment about a two-time NBA champion and 6th Man of the Year fighting for his life. Three months after the Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage legal nationwide, there is an increasing number of people terrified that 4 rainbow-colored horses will appear any minute now and bring about the apocalypse. A 21-year old murdered 9 people in a Charleston church in hopes of starting a race war, 2 deadly campus shootings have already occurred in October, but a lot of Americans are much more concerned with deflated footballs. Williams’ recent US (a.) is his first full-length book of poetry since 2006’s The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop, which earned him the unofficial title of “the poet laureate of Hip-Hop.” In his review of Scrolls, Mark Eleveld perfectly summed up Williams’ genius: “Williams is the guy. He has chosen a sublime path in the hip-hop world: yes, a “road less traveled.” He is the prototype synthesizer between poetry and hip-hop, stage and page, rap and prose, funk and mythology, slam and verse.” Williams is also preparing the 2016 release of MartyrLoserKing, his first album since 2011’s critically acclaimed Volcanic Sunlight. Like his previous work, Williams is planning to explore a multitude of ideas revolving around his expatriate views on contemporary America via two distinct creative platforms. I wanted to find a platform to be able to talk about all the s### that I had been experiencing and reading about on the world stage. There’s the one percent that we know of in terms of Wall Street and bankers. And that’s not a new fight. Then I think of those people that gave their lives and voices to uplift and connect the dots in terms of uplifting humanity. People like Aaron Schwartz. Those bureaucracies are composed of people like you and me who basically just have to check themselves. I think it’s Allen Ginsberg that has a poem where he says policemen are just regular people in disguise.” There is a shocking amount of people who don’t know much about Williams’ work at all. Strictly as it pertains to music, without Williams there would be no Yeezus, To Pimp A Butterfly, Death Grips, Chance The Rapper, or even Childish Gambino. In fact, I myself would not be in the position I am right now (permitted free reign by AHH CEO Mr. “Grouchy” Greg Watkins himself to pen an extremely long article on the most heavily trafficked Hip-Hop website in the word). During spring-break of 2009 most of my friends were drinking Coronas in tropical climates far away from cramped University lecture halls, but I was in Phoenix, Arizona to watch Williams perform. I had seen his image many times before on screen, but as I sat in the auditorium, subconsciously I was expecting a towering figure to stroll onstage– a figure that physically matched the stupefying work of his incredulous resume. But a slender man walked onstage, talking about his career and fielding questions from the audience in an extremely personable, down-to-Earth fashion. Before he finished his performance with “Coded Language,” an audience member asked him about the Nike commercial. In 2008 Williams received a firestorm of criticism after his song “List of Demands” appeared in a Nike marketing campaign called “My better is better.” Since the release of the commercial, Williams has repeatedly been asked that question by journalists and fans alike, always giving the same sort of, and I paraphrase, “who gives a s###?” answer. Regardless of your views on capitalism, the “infamous” commercial introduced a lot of lifelong disciples to Williams’ work for the first time, a New York native who would write his first song “Black Stacey” while in high school. During his MFA graduate studies at NYU, Williams’ thesis project about an extremely talented yet troubled slam poet/rapper turned into the 1998 film Slam, which went on to win awards at the Sundance Film Festival and Cannes. But I control the wind, that’s why they call it the hawk I am Horus, son of Isis, son of Osiris Worshiped as Jesus resurrected Like Lazarus, but you can call me Lazzy, “lazy” Yea I’m “lazy” cause I’d rather sit and build Than work and plow a field Worshiping a daily yield of cash green crops Even […]