TheOG.net, CA
Feb 15 2005

A Short Conversation with Saul Williams

TheOG: How’s it going Saul, how are you man?

SW: Chillin’ man, how are you?

TheOG: Can’t complain about a damn thing. So I have some questions
for you, if you got some time to answer them.

SW: Yeah definitely.

TheOG: I’m sure you’ve been getting this question a lot, but I was
wondering if you could talk about some of the differences between
producing your own record, with Saul Williams, compared to working
with Rick Rubin, on Amethyst Rock Star?

SW: Okay, cool. So, umm, well, first of all, we should be clear,
like, the majority of the music for the Amethyst Rock Star album, I
wrote that stuff as well. Rick Rubin is a producer in the rock sense
of the word – a rock producer doesn’t write the music for the band,
the rock producer sits back and says “yo you should pull up the
guitars”, or “make the drums heavier”. That’s how Rick worked with me
on the first album, and part of the confusion with that first album
stemmed from that, because I came from the hip-hop world and I was
expecting, you know, if I paid Timbaland to produce an album for me,
he’s coming with beats, right? You know, and so it was a bit
different… because I, you know, the power of Rick, and the beauty
of him, is that he sits back and pretty much trusts that the artist
he works with can bring what they have to the table. He just helps
them perfect that. So that’s how it is with that, but with this, the
Saul Williams album, the big difference was that I went into it not
expecting any body else to make anything for me…

TheOG: You knew you were going to do it all yourself.

SW: Yeah, I was clear on that. And I knew that I couldn’t really look
to anyone to make anything close to what I wanted to hear. So I had
to do it myself, because I had this music that I’m hearing in my
head, and these cats are coming to me with tracks that sound like
other people’s tracks, other people’s sounds, I was like nah I want
to hear something else. So I had to do it, in order to get those
voices and songs out of my head. It was a very fun process, it was
also dope because, at the time, I mean, I say it was dope but… I
wasn’t attached to any label, I had gotten off Rick Rubin’s label
before I created this album. And so, I created it in an environment
of pure freedom, at home. The only thing that wasn’t free was, like,
the rent, you know? I got to do it without anybody looking over my
shoulder.

TheOG: Do you feel, since the onus was on you, does that have
something to do with why you ended up making your album self-titled?

SW: Uhh, part of it, also because, I mean the real reason why the
album is self-titled is because when me and my peeps sat back trying
to think of the strongest title for an album, we realized that, like,
there’s nothing more powerful than putting your name on that shit.
Like put yourself out there, and back the fuck up, you know?

TheOG: Like, this is me, here I am?

SW: Yup.

TheOG: That’s dope. But you know, as an artist you’ve never been
confined to one medium. You broke out in ’98 with Slam, you’ve worked
with film, written and spoken words, music production, but, what
medium do you really feel the closest to?

SW: Well, I’d have to say, the true line through all of my shit is
hip-hop. So instead of saying what art form I feel closest to, I
could say that I feel closest to hip-hop culture. Whether it’s
expressing itself through film, through music, through dance, what
have you, that’s what I feel connected to. That’s the defining
element of my voice, and of our generation – it’s hip-hop, you know?
So that, growing up, there were lots of kids who were graff writers
that could also MC, that could also break, you know? That’s what I
come from. The fact that I write a little, and act a little, and do
all these things, that’s just a representation of hip-hop culture.

TheOG: In terms of people you’ve been working with and artists you’ve
been collaborating with, I know you worked with KRS-One in the past,
and on Saul Williams you worked with Serj Tankian from System of a
Down and Zach de la Rocha from Rage Against the Machine? How did you
end up working with those cats?

SW: Well both of those cats – I live in LA, and both of those cats
are friends of mine. So, I came about working with them just because
they were around and because I really respect their work. You know
it’s funny, there’s a lot of ghetto cats that love System of a Down,
just because they can feel how hard that music is. And that’s
partially because the Armenian cause is closely aligned with the
African-American cause, the cause of oppressed people across the
world, and that when they sing from the roots of their oppression,
people relate to that. That’s why their music is so hard. I just
always feel System of a Down’s work, and Zach’s work with Rage
Against the Machine also. You know Zach is Puerto Rican, and Tom
Morello is the nephew of Jomo Kenyatta. Umm, these cats are all very
closely related to the cause and what have you, and so I’ve just
always felt what they’ve done, and for the opportunity to work with
them… and also, I wanted to do something a little different, you
know I didn’t want to go the regular route of, you know, I got Busta
Rhymes on this song [laughter], I wanted to do something different.

TheOG: Yeah true. Now didn’t Serj write, didn’t he compose “Talk To
Strangers”, the opening track?

SW: Yeah the music for it. That’s him on the piano.

TheOG: Damn, I have to say that….

SW: And the crazy thing was that he just did that for me out of the
blue. One day he was like “Saul I wrote a song for you on piano, I
don’t know how you’re going to feel about it but I just wrote this
for you, and you know it’s for you to do whatever you want with it.”
Isn’t that crazy?

TheOG: Man, that’s got to be a flattering feeling, to have someone
straight up write a song for you.

SW: Yeah, like wow!

TheOG: You know, I gotta say that that song is probably the most
powerful fusion of music and spoken words that I’ve ever heard. When
I first put the album on, and that track came on, I was just… I
couldn’t get past it! It ended, and I was like “rewind, rewind”.

SW: I have the same thing for it, because I was really looking for an
opening track, you know, and I wanted an opening that would put
everything into context. People would see that this is where I’m
from, but I don’t think like this, and yeah I was raised in these
sorts of surroundings but I don’t surround myself with this. I just
really wanted it to touch on so many truths, and I felt blessed
because the lyrics came the way they did. And that was of course
inspired by the music, so it was just really wonderful.

TheOG: Yeah man, I’m with you. In terms of, like, you know, critics
and people in this world, like me, that end up writing about music
and about the things that other people create, you know, the word
fusion has come up a lot in trying to describe your work and the
music you create. I just wanted to know, how do you feel about that?
If you had to describe your music, is that what you see yourself
trying to do? Do you see yourself trying to bring together different
genres and different forms?

SW: Well, if I were to really look at my work then I would say I’m
trying to bring together different people, you know? That’s the goal
of the book, the goal of the book is not to fuse a genre, but if I
can get two people who would think that they would not like each
other, to nod their heads to the same song, and for that song to make
them think, and grow, and encourage them. Let’s say those two people
are a Palestinian and an Israeli, you know, or a ghetto kid and a
suburban kid, and to get those kids, not just nodding their heads
because the beat is tight, but nodding their heads because they agree
with what’s being said and they realize that the underlying theme of
humanity is love. You know, that’s the point of my music, the idea is
to breed consciousness. That’s the point of what I do. It has little
to do with like, yo I’m a make this so that punk rock kids and
hip-hop kids can both feel it, you know like that’s there, that’s in
the music, but that’s just me, you know? That’s how I was raised. I
was raised in an all-black, you know a very black community, but was
picked on because I spoke what they said was proper, you know, and so
they were like “Damn kid you kinda talk white!”, they would say. But
at the same time, everything that would come out of my mouth would be
something that I read in some Malcolm X book or something, so I was
the most militant kid, that seemed to talk white, but I was also
literally the darkest kid in the community! It was a fusion of shit,
you know? It was a fusion of realities that were impressed upon me as
a kid, and so my artistic expression reflects that fusion, yet now
it’s pointed towards the goal of fusing humanities, of fusing
consciousness, that’s the point of all this. To get people on the
same page. To get people realizing that we are human first, not
American first, to get men realizing the importance of women, you
know, just all of these things. There is so much growth that we need
to do before we can transition into the society that we want to live
in. The point of my music is that.

TheOG: That’s dope man, that’s real dope. I got two more for you,
one: the state of music in the world today? Do you feel optimistic,
do you feel pessimistic, I mean, how do you feel about where
we’re….

SW: Optimistic man! I feel optimistic. You know, like, I swear
hip-hop has taken a turn for the better. Like, what, the most
commercial release right now is, what, The Game album right?

TheOG: Yup.

SW: And…. that shit is dope!

TheOG: Yeah man! That “Documentary” track on there…

SW: It’s all about “Dreams” man. That [singing] “Martin Luther King
had a dream!” That shit!!!!!!

TheOG: Yeah!

SW: Yeah but the “Documentary”, where he throws all the names of the
classics out…

TheOG: Word, that’s all I am!

SW: All I ask is that the cats who take the spotlight, earn it. And
you don’t earn it by shooting or getting shot, you earn it by doing
your homework, and realizing the power of what you say. And I feel
like that’s what I’m getting from this dude. You know, The Game, I’m
like, okay, that’s alright, I hope it goes platinum! Double time! You
know, like, that’s the type of shit, it’s like it’s right, so like
yeah, I think shit is happening right now. And I hope that inspires a
lot of these young kids, you know, from whoever, from Lil Wayne on
down. To look at that and be like, okay, maybe we need to do some
homework and not just talk about the amount of money we’re making.
It’s all about the connections between what we’re doing and what’s
already been done, you know? And not just what’s already been done in
hip-hop, but, you know who the original MC in the Black community
was, the minister! You know? And the street version of that was the
pimp. Like there’s just a whole, there’s a whole long line of history
that we have to connect our work to, or else we won’t be doing our
job. Or else we’ll be confusing kids, and making people think that
money is God, that money is power, and that is corruption.

TheOG: Speaking of young people, I’m affiliated with a group of young
aspiring spoken word artists who are incarcerated at a youth
detention facility in California, and man they would love it if you
could give them some wisdom.

SW: Well, my belief is that good writing is reflective of good
reading, first of all. Now, for a lot of people, there’s a lot of
variance about what is good reading. Some people think that good
reading means that means you’re supposed to read, you know, the
Autobiography of Malcolm X, and, you know, some non-fiction books
about the state of society, and blah blah blah. Now that’s good
reading, but poetry is an aesthetic art form. Poetry is very much
about aesthetics, aesthetics is about beauty, and enhancing the sense
of truth and beauty, so that we have to study beauty if we are going
to write beautiful poetry. So we have to find some flowery writing,
we have to find not only the politics but we have to find beautiful
ways of saying what we mean, and meaningful ways of saying what we
feel. That also is learned truth. So I would say, umm, I personally
would make lot’s of trips to second hand book stores, and find odd
books that just fall off the shelves in the fiction zone, in the
science fiction zone, in the poetry zone, and all those different
sections, and read them! I would expose myself to as much amazing
literature as possible, enter in to conversations about books that
have moved me, find books that move me. I read a lot of books that
move me because they teach me how to write stuff that is moving! It’s
very much about what you read, which is to say it’s very much about
your diet, because what you read is what you ingest, so it’s also
about what you watch. If you watch a lot of bullshit and listen to a
lot of bullshit, you’re going to write a bunch of bullshit because if
that’s what you’re digesting, that’s what will come out of you! You
have to be mindful about what you put into your body, not just your
food, but what you read, what you listen to.

TheOG: Truly man. Well, that about wraps it up for me, thank you so
much for taking the time to share your thoughts with us, I’m really
glad we got the chance.

SW: No problem man, thank you.

TheOG: Alright, peace!

Credit: G-Rice Exclusively for theOG.net
Special thanks to Saul Williams