What's The Deal With Saul Williams?

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

Judd and Molly

By Dom Passantino

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Chapter #1- House of Pain

Judd put the gun down. It was an impressive gun, more than enough to fulfil any Leone or Peckinpah fantasy Judd entertained. But, unfortunately, it didn’t work for the Mills and Boon lifestyle that Judd wanted. 18 months he’d spent stalking Molly, and she didn’t even think to give him a second look? Did she know what he’d been through to try and get through to her? Did she understand what he felt? Did she realise how difficult it was to find her address so he could send flowers to her? Especially after she went ex-directory, commenting wryly to Judd “You go anywhere near my house, and my boyfriend will cut your cock off, you bloody f---ed-up freak”. She had a definite way with words, did Molly. Very much cut in the Ian McEwan mould. If Ian McEwan were an 18 year old girl with constant cold sores and a Hello Kitty lunchbox. But, still, despite all of the problems, Judd still loved Molly. It was all he could do, really, love her, never leave her.

Judd knew about the thunderbolt, that one moment in your life when you realise that you’ve just seen the person you wish to spend your entire life with. Judd knew all about it. However, he didn’t expect the thunderbolt to descend from the sky one rainy Monday morning, in an English literature lesson, whilst the well meaning, but hopelessly Radio 4, teacher wittered on about William Blake. Molly… Molly was… Judd didn’t know what she was. He’d spent 1the past 18 months of his life focusing on that girl non-stop, fantasising about every possible scenario involving her, allowing her to eat into every single moment of his life. She was his A.I.D.S.… and yet he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was he found so attractive, so attractive, so important about her. She wasn’t beautiful, by any stretch of the imagination. Crueller tongues in the school compared her to Patty and/or Selma. Her hair was pulled back with a bulldog clip, giving her bun the same tension as Joan Rivers’ skin. Her clothing resembled a ram-raiding attack on River Island, random bits of fashion that was already 3 days out of date. She wore see-through mules, revealing her anaemic-fairy white skin further, her toe-nails done meticulously in purple, and yet still looking neglected. No, it wasn’t really her looks that attracted him to her.

Her personality? Her personality? No, definitely not. Molly’s interests could be listed in three as Tom Stoppard, deep trance, and deep throat. The usual hobbies of the modern middle class girl, really. Her voice was the voice of a self-mutilator, full of pauses, stops and starts, and embarrassing ums and ahs, penetrated every so often with a tirade of violent anger and swearing, like Barry Fry on crack. It was this combination of traits that had seen Molly get shunned by nearly everyone in her year group. Everyone except her boyfriend, and practising Satanist, Leonard.

When word got around the school that a Satanist was studying there, most of the students wetted their sponges with hopes of 6 foot 7” Nick Cave types wandering about sacrificing goats and eating chickens. A bit of excitement, at least, a dangerous religion that wasn’t going to car-bomb anyone. They expected something interesting, intriguing, and sexy. What they didn’t expect was Leonard. Leonard, with his Savage Garden tee-shirts and his combat trousers. Leonard, with his foppish hairdo, and habit of talking through the side of his mouth. Leonard, with his face that seemed to have singled him out from birth for a career in I.T. networking. Leonard was an arsehole. There was no doubt about it. He was the very dictionary definition of “arsehole”. Judd was fully aware of Leonard’s arseholeness, and his entanglement with Molly only added to Judd’s problems.

With Molly being as Molly was, and there being no chance of Judd recovering from what was past, he was left to… what was he actually left to do? Nothing. Nothing at all. Absolutely sweet Fanny Addams, Faustino Asprilla, Francis of Assisi, f--- all. He wandered from day to day, desperately searching for something, anything, to occupy his time, anything not called Molly. Socialism, pornography, heroin- Judd felt like he was permanently living to edge Molly out of his life, and replace her with something… less damaging to his health.

He picked the gun back up again. Himself, Molly, or Leonard? Himself, Molly, or Leonard… Leonard had suddenly decided he wanted to be called “Leon”. It seemed that every single essence of Leonard’s being was specifically created by God to be as annoying, as grating to Judd as could possibly be. Every single little aspect that made up Leonard, from his Silverchair CDs, to his aromatherapy expertise, to his insistence on “ironically” flirting with his elderly teachers, to his foppishness. Fop, fop, fop. Hugh Grant with the spine removed.

Judd considered what it’d be like to kill Leonard, to slowly, carefully, yet violently ram that big black cock of death straight into Leonard’s mouth, past his perfectly white teeth, feeling the tension as Leonard bit down on the gun, Leonard’s breathing getting harder and harder, the silence punctuated just by his gasps, the last breaths he would ever take, before Judd pulled the trigger, and decorated the surrounding walls with fragments of Leonard’s skull, a Jackson Pollock of bloody and brainmatter appearing on the floor. Don’t get me wrong, Judd wasn’t a violent person. Far from it. He was a complete pussy. That explains why he kept putting the gun down.

“Come on, grow some guts man” Judd thought to himself, aware of how ridiculous those words sounded when said by, or in any relation to, him. A thin, smug, bespectacled guy with bad hair, trying to turn from Adrian Mole to Dirty Harry. Judd sighed. He went over to the CD player, and turned it on, hoping that he could absorb a predeliction for violence through soundwaves. House of Pain’s 1993 opus “Jump Around” attempted to fill that role for him. As Everlast ranted and rapped over the beat, Judd tried to work out what the hell to do.

He’d considered raping Molly, but that was too… undignified. He didn’t want to be a rapist, he refused to believe he was that far gone. Even in obsession, he liked to think that he had some ethics left. Each second spent thinking about Molly, though, was another second where his ethics seemed intrusive.

Judd thought about how Mafia dons can quite happily peddle heroin and force woman into crack-whoredom, but will go mad if someone insults the Pope. Twisted ideas of what is right and wrong, and when Judd peered through the looking glass of his lust for Molly, right and wrong seemed to melt like a Dali clockface. If not rape, maybe murder?

If he did shoot Molly, maybe he could make it look like a suicide pact! Maybe… maybe… just maybe…maybe he could shoot her, and then shoot himself… and there could be fake letters, suicide notes! Yes, he’d fake the suicide notes, and the letters would say that each of them loved each other, and that Leonard was evil and stopped their union, and everyone would feel sympathy for themselves, and in death everyone would think he was great, and the books would always say that him and Molly were in love, and everything would be good, and we could all go home happy and and Leonard would be put down and they’d be together in the afterlife and and and…

Judd put the gun under his chin, and pulled the trigger.

“Jump jump jump, everybody jump!”

"nappy-haired slow-grind trajectory"

http://frontwheeldrive.com/images/mike_ladd.gif

it's forgiven

mike has what the kids at my school (and i in my youth) would have called not "nap" but "jewfro"

"for all those killed by cops" is about coming down from staying up all night on drugs, if i remember right?

"your assignment: please include 30 pop culture references in a short story"

i look forward to seeing everyone else's mike ladd reviews written when they were 17

"for all those killed by cops" is easily one of my very favourite songs. there's a third -sticons album due sometime next year...

majesticons was the best thing mike ladd ever did.

ive a feeling the production on the new saul album is going to be a bit dated. he should have worked with el-p instead of trent if hes going for a murky rock-appealing bomb squad type of thing.

i saw mike ladd when i was like 18, there were like 20 other people there but it blew my miiiiind man

"someone" leaked a track on the pirate bay:

http://www.nin.com :

**UPDATE!
Seems like someone leaked a track...
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3858980

The beats on the Majesticons LP were great, what made it a bit-less-than-awesome is that some of it's targets were kinda too easy, even if the lyrics were often really funny. The Infesticons LP on the other hand was marred by being too artsy, what with the spoken word slam poetry stuff taking up almost half of the album. If Ladd ever does the rumoured third installment in the series, which is supposed to be a synthesis between the Infesticons and Majesticons, it should have the potential for greatness.

I'm halfway through my first listen and I'm not sure what to think just yet, except that a) no one should cover U2 and b) the chorus of the title track is actually pretty funny.

"When I say 'Niggy', you say nothin'! Niggy."
(pause)
"Niggy."
(pause)
"When I say 'Niggy', you say nothin'! Niggy."
"Nothing!"
"Shut up."

Also besides "Scared Monkey" this might as well be Year Zero Pt 2, which is not a good thing. Waaaay too much Trent input on this thing.