Speaking with Saul Williams

Sam Bloch Staff Writer

Renowned poet, actor, and musician Saul Williams delivered a two-hour spoken word performance in the Students’ Building on Monday, Feb. 13., taking audience questions throughout. Williams, who rose to fame in 1998 with Slam, a much-revered story of coping with gang life, was also recently dubbed “the world’s hottest lyricist” by New Music Express. Williams is currently touring college campuses across the country to promote The Dead Emcee Scrolls, his latest poetry collection. The Miscellany News spoke with Williams about contemporary hip-hop, college life, and the aims of his art.

The Miscellany News: What was your college experience like?
Saul Williams: I went to Morehouse College and majored in philosophy and drama. I was very much a drama student, and it was so original on every level—[the plays] and what characters wanted were messages to the community. I learned it could be so political; plays were banned in South Africa during the apartheid movement because theater was a revolutionary place. But when I went to NYU [for graduate school], I felt I was [doing] theater for theater’s sake. The shift was difficult.
MN: What do you get out of your different artistic mediums?
SW: Acting is therapeutic. You can’t learn something about a character without learning something about yourself. If you’re playing Hamlet and there’s sexual tension between him and his mother, you have to ask yourself how you would feel about your mother if she was with your uncle who killed your father. Music is more of a release. In a crass sense, if poetry is making love, music is fucking. I’m playing around with what’s on the surface. And when I first started writing poetry, it was very important for me to reach my peers. We are living in a state of emergency, and the ideas are really simple: encourage youth to think for themselves when we have “Think Different™” and “Just Do It.™”
MN: How do you feel about the different levels of exposure for your work—like making music videos to run on MTV?
SW: I’m not opposed to MTV exposure. They’ve published my last three books. And I know they are into the demographic that I’m trying to reach. With Norton, for example, it’s like, “Hey, are there any new dead white men I can check out?” My thing [with MTV] has been, “Whatever, I know you want to jump on my bandwagon because Slam came out,” but my lawyer has assured me that every line [I send them] will be printed. MTV has never touched my manuscripts.
MN: Tell me a bit about The Dead Emcee Scrolls. What are you trying to say in this collection that you haven’t in your others?
SW: My intent was to create the dopest hip-hop album never recorded. I wanted it to read—especially the first poem [“NGH WHT”]—like an album, to feel the beat off the page. And the question that I’m asking is: how could an emcee not realize the power of word after being forced to serve a sentence? The number of emcees behind bars is absurd. And they don’t realize it’s because of the power of their words. It’s like, “Dude, this is the most powerful shit we’ve ever created!” [With] jazz, they were screaming, but they couldn’t use their voices, because they knew they’d get killed.