Posted on 11/21/2007

You all know the deal by now, November 1 brought the five-dollar or free digital birth of Niggy Tardust to the inboxes of music lovers and cheapskates alike. The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust is Saul Williams' third full-length album and first independently released. Drawing acclaim as a wordsmith from his Nuyorican Poets Café days and the award-winning indie hit, "Slam," one might mistake Williams, as I did, for a poet first, all else second. But the multi-hyphenate artist makes it clear he was always an actor as shown by his return to the stage in Sanford Biggers' performance art cum minstrel show deconstruction "The Somethin' Suite," performed with other underground icons such as Martin Luther and Imani Uzuri. For more on that, the new album and why ‘nigger' can't go, heeeeere's Niggy!

OKP: Can you talk a little bit about the genesis of Niggy Tardust as an album and even as a character?

Saul Williams: Well, I can definitely talk about the genesis of the project. [Muffled sounds.] Sorry I'm in the lobby of a hotel.

OKP: That's okay. She said you were being ousted.

SW: Yeah, I was being ousted. So, anyway the project came about when I was...it started with Trent Reznor. I started it before I started touring with Trent. The first song I recorded for the project was "Scared Money." That was the first song that I recorded after I finished my last album. I knew the next album was a concept album, but I didn't know exactly what it was. After that, Trent Reznor, I did the tour with him, and as soon as I started touring with him he asked me if I would be willing to collaborate with him on some music and I thought that would be fun. When I'm working, whatever I'm working on at the time, goes directly toward whatever project I'm working on, so I just knew that whatever we would create would go towards what I had already started. So it came about that way.

The way it differs from the other projects really is, firstly, from the fact that this situation, nothing was idea-driven. Everything was music-driven. Like the music came first and I wrote whatever the music dictated. Also, it's the first album that I ever wrote in a particular type of high, a particular type of zone, which is from the high extending off of stage. Like I was touring a lot for my last album and instead of going out and partying or whatever when I got offstage, I would go straight to this new music and take the energy from the stage and apply it to the page, apply it to the new writing for this album, so that there's a part of me that's like, ‘Oh my God, I can't wait to perform this stuff live' because that's what it's really written for. It's written to perform out there, that's why it sounds the way it does, why it has all that energy. It was written to be performed live.

OKP: Speaking of which, I did see you live Monday at the Performa 07 show (Sanford Biggers' "The Somethin' Suite"). I was wondering how you got involved with that?

SW: Sanford Biggers was an old classmate of mine. He was an upperclassmen when I was just a freshman at Morehouse and he was one of the kids that we felt was cool because you know whatever he had rips in his jeans and pretty girls around him (laughter), so I came to know him while I was there. So he asked if I would collaborate with him and when he listed the names of the other artists involved, they're all friends of mine, so I was like, ‘Oh, I'll be in good company.' I'd definitely participate, but I didn't know what I was getting involved with, I didn't know what it actually was going to be until maybe like a couple of weeks before when he mentioned what it was, I was then going to be releasing my album and I was like, ‘Well I don't know if you have a title for it, but it definitely should be subtitled, The Birth of Niggy Tardust, because that really fits in with my character, the creation of Niggy Tardust. He was completely open to that and yeah, it really fit in with the whole scheme of what I was working on as well.

OKP: And there you performed the track "Niggy Tardust" as part of the show?

SW: I performed actually excerpts of two tracks from the "Niggy Tardust" album. One is the title track, "Niggy Tardust," and the other was "The Ritual."

OKP: And how did it feel to get that live feedback?

SW: Well you know The Box is [an] interesting place because it's so warm and so, you know, ancient. It's also a place that you know covers, I don't know if you know, it covers an African Burial Ground.

OKP: No, I didn't know that.

SW: Yeah, it's one of the places in New York City where there was an African Burial Ground beneath it.

OKP: Wow.

SW: (laughter) There's a lot in this city.

OKP: That makes the Biggers show seem even more appropriate, then, to be held there.

SW: Exactly. And for me performance is ritual. My background's in theatre and the Niggy Tardust concept is designed for me to be able to bring more of that background to the stage. Once again, I guess in a sense defy however it is that someone might see - I think I read on your site - yeah it was, it was the review on your site that said, you know, ‘I can't help thinking he's a spoken word artist,' which is funny to me because I just started writing poems when I was twenty-three, you know, and it's just something that I've done. Just like if you called me five years before, you say, ‘Oh he's a basketball player.' It's like however you first meet somebody is what sticks in your mind. But that's been the last thing that I've ever thought of myself as. That's why I turned down hosting "Def Poetry Jam." I was like, ‘Uh, you know, that's not really my world.' I know that I'm a scribe for that world, but I could never host. It wouldn't be authentic for me. I'm more of someone in the background who might read a poem every now and then, but it seems like every time I turn out to do that, there are cameras there and so that's what the label is. But I've been a student all along.

OKP: I do find that kind of interesting maybe because you seemed to blow up or first came on most people's radar as a poet, so that is kind of interesting.

SW: Yeah, but my background is in theatre. It's funny, like when I did the film "Slam," I didn't do it because I wanted my poems in it. I did it because I was in graduate school for acting. I was there to act. They asked me to write and not act and I'm like, ‘I'm not writing this thing unless I act. That's what I do, I act. I'm a performer.' So they're like, ‘Okay. We'll let you act.' (laughter)

OKP: You were saying that the concept wasn't necessarily in stone from the outset. At what point did you know, ‘Okay, this is going to be the direction it's going in and this is what I'm trying to say through this person'?

SW: That person is always filtered through me, so that the idea of something being set in stone it's kinda like, once again, the ending of the film "Slam." People always question, ‘Well what does he do? Does he go to jail? Does he run? What does he do?' So everyone's forced to come up with their own ending. The story of Niggy Tardust is in his music. If you want to hear the story articulated, then you have to ask anybody who listened to the album and have them articulate it for you ‘cause that's not what I do, know what I'm saying (laughter). He lives through his music, you know. Now what he is, is he's a hybrid. Someone that was born in the ‘hood, but speaks, you know it's like, "My language is broken into a slang that is just a dialect that I select when I hang." It's someone like all of us who lives many lives in many worlds, but someone who chooses to fuse them all together and say, ‘I don't fit into any of the boxes that you want to put me in.' Niggy Tardust is the omni-American. He's the one who realizes that he is both, in his bloodline he is both slave and overseer. He structures all of these things in his bloodline, cowboy and Indian, and he says, you know, instead of choosing sides, he says, ‘I am all of that. I'm all of that.' He rises to the occasion.

OKP: Cool. I think last question because you might be running out of time. Do you find your music as your preferred medium now or are you just taking it as it goes? Will you still act? Will you still do poetry? Will you still write?

SW: I take it as it goes. Really all along, all I've really been doing is riding a wave like a surfer. They can't dictate what kind of wave is going to come. They can dictate how they move the board through that wave and look for the trick they pull off and how long they're able to stand up and all this stuff. That's what I'm doing; I'm just riding the wave. I love poetry. I love music. I love acting. What I don't love is the sort of thing they ask me to do for them. So when certain acting things come up, if I don't agree, you know, with the story or it's real need to be out there like that, then I'm basically quick to say, ‘Eh, no thank you.' Because it wouldn't be fun. Like that's my only rule is that I want to enjoy my work (laughter) and I want to be able to sleep at night.

OKP: Doesn't seem like too much to ask.

SW: Yeah, it doesn't seem like too much to ask. If I'm out there playing a cop, you know, or some detective or just participating in this thing that says, ‘Okay, we need a handsome White guy and a funny Black guy beside him.' or any of that shit that perpetuates the norm, then why? If I'm going to do that, why would I bother being an artist? Might as well just have a 9-to-5 if I'm just gonna not raise, you know, shit. You know, like what's the purpose of being an artist if you're not going to stand on your own like that. I'm not into that. So that's really all I'm doing. To me, it doesn't seem like that much of a big deal.

OKP: Well maybe because so few seem to be taking the same stand, it seems extraordinary to everyone else.

SW: That's beautiful. I think that the most amazing thing that we could do, you know, our generation, would be for everyone, like let's say if every college student in America decided to major on what they were passionate about rather than what would earn them money. That would be revolutionary.

OKP: That's very true.

SW: And what would surprise them all would be them realizing they earn more money doing what they're passionate about than they would doing something that they're not passionate about. And the reason why it's important is because war is (muffled) -

OKP: Because what? I'm sorry?

SW: War. Warfare is heartless business. And that's what music has become - heartless business. Why share a song if you're not sharing your heart? I don't want to hear your song if your heart's not in it. I give a fuck about your song if your heart's not in it. You know? Honestly. But that doesn't mean what someone might translate that to mean. Like, I'm a huge 50 Cent fan, for example, ‘cause I hear his heart in his music. The cats that said he's heartless, hmm, I don't know. I hear his heart in his music, too. If he's lying to me - (laughs) - but yeah, it's important to me.

OKP: And, I know I said last question, this is the official last question.

SW: Yeah. Whatever.

OKP: Is there, like, a tour date set to start performing the Tardust stuff live?

SW: We're figuring that out right now. Yeah, it'll be next year, but nothing is set in stone yet.

OKP: You know you did talk a bit about decisions you make as an artist and sort of going back to the Sanford Biggers project, do you find yourself having to choose over issues of commerce and sort of the minstrelsy and that kind of thing in your own work?

SW: Not really, I mean I chose myself to name my character Niggy Tardust knowing what the ramifications of that could be on any and every level, you know. When it comes to issues of commerce, I think of just issues of being present. I think that there's enough out there today that we can find a creative way around the stereotyping and the boxes, you know, but we have to go in to experiment. At the same time that I create the music that I do, I understand why the music industry maybe, may have been at times in my past hesitant to support an artist like me because I'm really open to experiment and they're like, you know, healthcare companies, if you watch the film "Sicko," they're like, ‘Oh that's experimental. We can't put our money behind that.' But it's all right because my faith is in the people, like that's what I feel connected to. I understand people; I don't understand executives too well. But I know that the decisions that I make are executive decisions. And so it's all good. No, there is no minstrelsy on my block.

OKP: Okay. (laughter)

SW: As far as what I've had to deal with, people have been very respectful of me. Even if they said, ‘Nah, I'm not down with that,' or what have you, they've been very respectful. It's cool. And I don't think that that effects the goal of Black people, for example, selling themselves out. I think a lot of artists get into the game and are willing to conform without realizing what the actual cost of that or the effect of that is.

[Then I heard a voice from above requesting me to move on to my last question. At which time, I was ready to stop right there. After all, they were slightly behind and I wouldn't dare short anyone else on their Niggytime. But then Saul said]:

SW: Please, this is Okayplayer. C'mon, you've got to ask me more questions. You should have one more question. Okayplayer?

OKP: Well, I can throw one more in there actually.  I was actually thinking about the fans and other public reaction to your use of the word ‘nigger.' And you know you explore it a lot on this album. Do you find yourself having to respond to people who think, ‘Oh no, this word should be omitted at all times no matter what the context is'?

SW: To really get the response of that, you should read my book the "Dead Emcee Scrolls," which will explain even my usage of it in the album. The introduction of that book will do that. At the same time, I would have to say that as someone who has traveled the world, you know, since being a teenager, I've had so many dozens of different franchise people from across the world, Aboriginal kids, coming up to me and saying, and looking into my eyes and saying, ‘I am nigger, too.' And what they mean by that is like the world's understanding of the word ‘nigger' is that it means they've been used by the government, treated like a slave and all of these things. They don't just associate it with Black, they associate it, you know like, John Lennon did in the ‘60s, ‘I'm the nigger of the world' and Patti Smith talking about ‘the rock and roll nigger,' all this stuff, you know. I think that us taking the word nigger and trying to throw it away would be like us taking down our 9-11 ‘Never Forget' signs. Forget, forget, forget, you know? Would people ever forget that?  Just like Jews don't want people to forget the Holocaust? And our usage of the term, it's true, our generation has flipped it. Even though I don't want to see that word disappear, I believe that it will through a natural occurrence of the times, we'll grow tired of it. That's one of the things that Niggy Tardust is going to do. But nonetheless, I think that I have faith in our subconscious process, the things that have lead our generation to use the word the way we have, means something. And just because we haven't found the people who are necessary to articulate it clearly to the media or through the media, I don't think that we have to do like our elders and just get in front of cameras and be like, ‘No, I do not use that word. I do not condone the usage of it' and then go home. Nah, the reason why we say it is because of our belief in something. Can we fully articulate what that is? No, I don't know if we can, but there's a process going on, a healing process going on and it's important. So that actually pits our generation against the NAACP, but that's all right because they're talking about the advancement of "colored people."

OKP: (laughter) But they want to be specific about the vocabulary.

[The voice returns.]

SW: You know? So yeah...I think we're done.

 

- Candace L.