What's The Deal With Saul Williams?

^^ from that big ego trip book

from Saul's forum post I just quoted:

"I’ve also thought long and hard about all the discussion surrounding racial epithets etc. and chose this title as a means of furthering the dialogue while also showing how creativity will outlive and outshine hatred of any kind."

This isn't the guy you want to attack concerning race stuff, folks.

nobody's 'attacking' saul williams here - i dug 'twice the first time' and slam, hated his rock-rap bullshit, and only said his pattern of album naming here is 'suspect'

xpost OTM

He's probably thought about anything that anyone can say in this thread like 800 times over.

His rap-rock stuff is great!

calling someone's actions 'suspect' is not the same as attacking him, note the use of quotes

I imagine this album will sound a lot like El-P's album.

The real issue here is that Saul is hit and miss on his best day and Trent is miss and miss on everything in the last ten years or so.

Back of envelope math predicts a 75% suck ratio.

Still worth $5?

xposts

ok ok, I take that "attack" back - I should have used another verb.

I'd like a little spoon of ice cream before I buy the whole cone.

He'll probably put up some samples on that "spread the word" channel they're asking people to link to:

http://niggytardust.com/saulwilliams/spreadtheword

it's worth $5 to me just to support what they're doing, but even though i like trent he produced one of the worst tracks on saul's last record. basically i hope it doesn't sound like an el-p album!

http://emynd.blogspot.com/2005/07/its-new-day-and-better-day-is-coming.html

well his new album is pretty much a rock album. albeit one which acknowledges the existence of rhythm.
-- The Lex (The Lex), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 21:11 (2 years ago) Link

ban sasha frere jones the plagiarist.

i don't like the catchdubs mix, if only because saul's shit sounds worse than it does over his own beats

at least sasha didnt say genre divisions were 'apartheid' that 'strip each artist down to nigger'

haha no i was joking that sfj plagiarized lex. carry on.

very clever

i try my best.

http://emynd.blogspot.com/2005/07/its-new-day-and-better-day-is-coming.html

-- and what, Thursday, October 25, 2007 7:58 PM

Was this an indication of approval or disapproval?

trust dolphins

I'm willing to give this a chance- I like the Kill Memory Crash remix of one of his tracks, at least- but the video on his Myspace (scroll down)? Uh...

and wtf man you seem to have no problem being a white dude telling black artists what their community responsibilities are in every rap thread no matter how tedious or self-parodic it gets

-- and what, Thursday, October 25, 2007 12:19 PM (Thursday, October 25, 2007 12:19 PM) Bookmark Link

"and wtf"

Fuck. I have no use for Saul Williams, but same as that other act I have no use for, it's free, so why the hell not. And I like Rez sometimes. And I liked parts of that El-P album that this might sound like, so again, why the hell not.

you could just spent $5 on a used 12" of puffy's victory with nin remix

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqg0Zl8tDuI

1st rap record ever bought by BIG HOOS aka the steendriver

I liked some of Amethyst Rock Star, but I listened to a track (the single?) from this last night and it was real ho hum, murky subpar Reznor production just like Year Zero. Maybe I'll get this with the "pay nothing" option just to check it out, that's what I did with the Radiohead and I was glad I didn't pay anything because I didn't really enjoy that album at all.

amethyst rock star was garbage

his joint on the infesticons LP was nice tho ('monkey theme')

hey, i said i liked some of it (mostly the crazy over the top dnb song from the DJ Krust album).

well his new album is pretty much a rock album. albeit one which acknowledges the existence of rhythm.
-- The Lex (The Lex), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 21:11 (2 years ago) Link

Lex's favourite rappers ever are Saul Williams and Princess Superstar

Ban the early 2000s.

good to see he's continuing in breaking down the walls of genre with his strong anti-mainstream works like
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e7/Saw2sountrack.jpg/200px-Saw2sountrack.jpg
1. "Irresponsible Hate Anthem" (Venus Head Trap Mix) – Marilyn Manson – 3:41
2. "Sound Effects and Over Dramatics" – The Used – 3:28
3. "Forget to Remember" – Mudvayne – 3:33
4. "September" – Bloodsimple – 3:38
5. "Blood (Empty Promises)" – Papa Roach – 2:56
6. "Rev. 22:20" (Rev. 4:20 Mix) – Puscifer – 4:47
7. "Pieces" – Sevendust – 3:06
8. "Rodent" (Ken "Hiwatt" Marshall/DDT Mix) – Skinny Puppy – 5:00
9. "Burn the Witch" (Unkle Variation) – Queens of the Stone Age – 3:04
10. "Holy" – A Band Called Pain – 3:43
11. "Three Fingers" – Buckethead and Friends featuring Saul Williams – 3:00
12. "Home Invasion Robbery" – The Legion of Doom – 4:11
13. "Caliente (Dark Entries)" – Revolting Cocks – 4:28
14. "Step Up" – Opiate For The Masses – 3:24
15. "Don't Forget the Rules" (Score) – Charlie Clouser – 5:02

the guy who just made an album with Trent Reznor probably won't be devastated that you pointed out the techno-metal soundtrack he appeared on.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41H5dwMniXL._AA240_.jpg

1. "(Can't You) Trip Like I Do" - Filter & The Crystal Method – 4:28
2. "Long Hard Road Out of Hell" - Marilyn Manson & Sneaker Pimps – 4:21
3. "Satan" - Orbital & Kirk Hammett/Metallica – 3:45
4. "Kick the P.A." - Korn & The Dust Brothers – 3:21
5. "Tiny Rubberband" - Butthole Surfers & Moby – 4:12
6. "For Whom the Bell Tolls (The Irony of it All)" - Metallica & DJ Spooky – 4:39
7. "Torn Apart" - Stabbing Westward & Wink – 4:53
8. "Skin Up Pin Up" - Mansun & 808 State – 5:27
9. "One Man Army" - The Prodigy & Tom Morello/Rage Against the Machine – 4:14
10. "Spawn" - Silverchair & Vitro – 4:28
11. "T-4 Strain" - Henry Rollins & Goldie – 5:19
12. "Familiar" - Incubus & DJ Greyboy – 3:22
13. "No Remorse (I Wanna Die)" - Slayer & Atari Teenage Riot – 4:16
14. "A Plane Scraped its Belly on a Sooty Yellow Moon" - Soul Coughing & Roni Size – 5:26

once upon a time jam master jay bought some hard rock records and people joked about it on the internet forever

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqg0Zl8tDuI

-- and what, Friday, October 26, 2007 4:02 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

1st rap record ever bought by BIG HOOS aka the steendriver

-- and what, Friday, October 26, 2007 4:02 PM

The section with Biggie is still kinda alright, but Christ I'd forgotten how awful that was.

the only saul williams thing i ever really liked were the very very early tracks, "elohim", "ohm" and "twice the first time" ... somehow he didn't really live up to the promise of the early tracks.

in my dreams though, this NIN + saul collaboration sounds like the best tracks from "welcome to the afterfuture"

are you kidding that remix is the shit

in my dreams though, this NIN + saul collaboration sounds like the best tracks from "welcome to the afterfuture"

-- moonship journey to baja, Friday, October 26, 2007 3:03 PM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

lol

i read the sales figures on that once, something like 873 copies sold... crazy that i was one of em back in 00

STARSHIP NIGGA!!! OUTERSPACE MOTHERFUCKER!!!

4 '99 (For All Those Killed by Cops)

You know the old dystopian prediction that cities of the future would be these huge ramshackle constructions, piled on the buildings of years past? Well, the reason that hasn't happened is that the "new" world would rather throw out the "old" unless they're too poor not to use it. Really the only old shit you see around now is preserved up all untouchable, museum-style. Practical application of existing structures just isn't viable in this modern urban landscape of ours.

Look at the cover of Mike Ladd's Welcome to the Afterfuture. It's an awful electrical mess, superimposed onto old building walls. Ladd's music reflects the artwork with chunky, pharmaceutical beats that sneak past dim strings. It's nasty New Orleans bounce with lyrics about listening to bootlegs of the Fall. And even though it looks kinda like a Marlboro ad, it's still a dope cover.

The record starts with "5000 Miles West of the Future," violently switching up from an analog keyboard assault to a sweeping ambient flow and back again, all while jazzy horn progressions seep through the background and make like Sun Ra handwriting. Ladd's rhymes on Afterfuture are at their most conversational, especially in breaks where he casually explains, "I'm gonna steal from the foreign merchant.../ For the cinnamon peeler's wife.../ Like I was bedding down with Isis."

As the buzzing keyboard stabs fade out, "Airwave Hysteria" begins, and the rest is swapped for rising strings and faux-Hindu chants, drifting yet again into some funky, bugged-out Casio shit over which Ladd first hits his lyrical stride, MCing with self-assured flow and coming with dense rhyme content to match ("Breakbeats from Thailand down over by the Ku Klux Klan chapter in Croatia/ We've come a long way from migrating crustaceans/ Generations of relations, history of violence/ I talked along in Babylon, next time I'll try silence"). Unlike many poet-turned-MCs, Ladd manages to go off like a motherfucker, and it all ends with a classic scratch breakdown, cut open with more of those damned trilling strings of his.

"Planet 10" breaks from these jams to bust on the simple beauty of a simple song, an intricate nautilus of synth tones and deep-space vocals stretching over junkyard ambience to some kind of nappy-haired slow-grind trajectory. Fuck neo-soul, this is post-soul, only somehow better than something called that should ever be.

Nothing else here really touches these first three tracks, but the rest comes close-- the lilting rush of the mostly instrumental "Takes More than 41," and the slow-to-start "To the Moon's Contractor," a song more summery than its interstellar title might lead you to believe. "I Feel Like $100" sounds like Warp Records unfavorites Red Snapper with actual forward drive and rhythmic interest, even with its dodgy "Strawberry Fields" reference.

Amazingly, Ladd goes for delf on every cut except the Company Flow-assisted "Bladeruners," a violent fucking storm of next-level racial and sexual articulation, wide string samples criss-crossing like frozen rivers, and a plodding organic bassline. It's perhaps the closest to rap traditionalism the album ever flirts with-- something for BET to sneak in on that lazy Thursday afternoon to give you a Videodrome-style brain tumor.

"It's all confused and beautiful" are the lines Ladd chooses to open "Feb. 4 '99 (For All Those Killed by Cops)," and it's exactly that. Besides Ladd's waxen imagery of childhood memories, the lyrics are mostly befuddling and his delivery is unconvincingly wide-eyed enough to fuel a thousand Bj�rk videos. I know good and well that Ladd's trying to make this closing track a "Strange Fruit" for a future of money, women and computers, and I'll be damned if he doesn't actually come shockingly close. It's a stunning end to the album.

For all the obvious influences ("Starship Nigga" is pretty much just Bj�rk's "Pluto" instilled with spaced-out black rage), the album still manages to sound pleasantly new, taking all the bits from the past that demand to be resurrected, and recontextualizing them into Ladd's own brainspace. Of course, this sort of thing has been done before, but I can't think of anything that's ever sounded as genuinely beautiful at the same time. It's all the wires from the liner notes covering children while they spread Christ-like onto antique brownstones. It's the genius of Ezra Pound and Greg Nice over tinny, rolling drums, and the awkwardness of my first paragraph over beautiful dimethicone symphonies. It's Mike Ladd assembling his personal afterfuture over the ramshackle remains of a distant past. Fresh!

i got the same issues w/ mike ladd that i do w/ saul williams. like, i liked you when you were yelling over alice coltrane but then when you were actually trying to do stuff with "good beats" it wasn't "good" anymore (cf majesticons)

"nappy-haired slow-grind trajectory"

http://www.dance-lyrics.com/ama/youve_come_a_long_way_baby_b00000d9vl.jpghttp://www.dance-lyrics.com/ama/youve_come_a_long_way_baby_b00000d9vl.jpg

wtf majesticons is good

majeticons is just OK compared to his early work.

i really liked the west coast rap style track on it though, something about "two white heifers on ecstasy" and bragging about his purple chuck taylor shoes