Primer: Saul Williams-- Local Cut

Primer: Saul Williams

November 11th, 2009 [6:03AM] Posted by: Matthew Singer | 0 COMMENTS

Born: 1972 in New York.

Latest release: NGH WHT—The Dead Emcee Scrolls with the Arditti Quartet, a collaboration with composer Thomas Kessler.

Why you care: Quick—name a slam poet other than Saul Williams. Guaranteed, if that were a question on Cash Cab, 10 out of 10 contestants would get kicked to the curb. But it isn’t just that Williams is the face—make that the only face—of a niche art form; it’s hard to find a performer, in any medium, who possesses the same level of intensity. (Hell, in the film Slam, he even made it seem plausible that a passionately delivered poem could save someone from getting shanked on a prison yard.) Already a cult phenomenon, Williams left the coffee-house circuit with 2001’s Amethyst Rock Star, a powerfully unique if overwhelming album setting his fiery spoken-word rants against an aggressive mix of electropunk, drum ’n’ bass and avant hip-hop. He refined his approach with 2007’s The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, finding the perfect collaborator in Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, whose production made Williams sound like an end-of-days preacher sermonizing amid a nuclear holocaust. But Williams is an artist best experienced live: As chaotic as his music can be on record, it explodes like an expertly constructed car bomb on stage.

Sounds like: Allen Ginsberg reincarnated as the frontman for Bad Brains.

For fans of: Zack de la Rocha, the Mars Volta, going to open-mic nights while on angel dust.

SEE IT: Saul Williams plays the Aladdin Theater on Sunday, Nov. 15, with CX Kidtronic & Tchaka Diallo, Earl Greyhound and American Fangs. 8 pm. $15. All ages.

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