Saul Williams
More people than ever are slowly but surely turning their ears toward poetry.Collection: Poetry
I was always making up rhymes. But I never thought that poetry would become my life.Collection: Poetry
My father's a preacher, my mother's a teacher, thus I rhyme.Collection: Teacher
Hip-hop is still cool at a party. But to me, hip-hop has never been strictly a party; it is also there to elevate consciousness.Collection: Cool
Legislation won't necessarily start a riot. But the right song can make someone pick up a chair.
I'm very excited about the resurgence of vinyl which seems to parallel a growing interest in live performance.
The music aids the message, it's there to punctuate and abbreviate and shape the silence.
If we're gonna progress as a people we are going to realise that, as one of my favourite poets says, the other is a lie. There are no other people. Race is a social construct.
We all have different relationships with music. But the music is always there.
The most powerful political voices are those with a different way of seeing and processing the world and the sounds that emanate from it.
You can't do anything that's not political in this time and age.
We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didn't walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud.
I remember back in the day when Chuck D called hip-hop the 'black people's CNN.' Well now, hip-hop is more like Fox News. It's biased, and highly suspect.
The only reason I've been so critical of hip-hop is because I've always been aware of the effect that it has, and the reflection that it gives of the African-American community.
Hip-hop is too young to put a definition on it.
The MC that we love are usually the ones that we consider be kinda heartless, like 50 Cent. That's pretty much the prowess and power of an MC. That's what sells.
The MC has to be just that, a master in control. They can show no signs of weakness.
Jay Z and President Bush have a lot in common, that same brash confidence.
There's no doubt in my mind that 'Slam' is going to be huge. It's a film about the power of language. People are going to see this and get blown away.
I've always been inspired by a lot of work coming out of the UK.
'Niggy Tardust' is the voice of a generation, a generation that does not define itself simply by what it's born into.
I didn't ever want to make a rap album. I considered it too limiting. Now that's exactly what I've gone and done.
I think it's a mistake where rap music is these days. It doesn't seem to be able to look out of the ghetto and that's ultimately unfortunate, because it defines our limitations.
Why shouldn't rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers, because they're black, can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence.
I have an acquired taste for language, yet it is seldom an actual focus of mine.
What's wrong with hip-hop is the system that controls the definition of it. There needs to be more balance on the airwaves.
I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written.
I am hoping for peaceful transition into a new age. Obama has already played a great role in initiating us into that vision. If he were to be harmed in any way, it would spawn the birth of a million Obamas.
The downfall of the industry seems to actually be good for art. I think the industry will find their way once the focus shifts from its greed-based origins, downsizes, and begins to support creative visions that speak to our times and shifting ideals.
Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life.Collection: Love
I think that the heart is a lot like those wonderful fruit, like coconut and mangoes, you know, you have to break the skin, you have to break it open to get to the good part.Collection: Heart
Sometimes our thoughts and feelings are our most prized possessions... and then there are times to let go of your possessions and wander.Collection: Letting Go
There is nothing more negligent than attempting to address a problem one finds on a branch than by censoring the leaves.Collection: Branches
If you're just addressing your own emotions and challenging yourself to find some sort of harmonious sense of being in life and questioning authority and questioning what's given and questioning what's expected of you, you're already on the cusp of finding something in yourself, and maybe waking something in somebody else.Collection: Challenges
We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun. We are not afraid of the darkness. We trust that the moon shall guide us. We are determining the future at this very moment. We know that the heart is the philosopher's stone. Our music is our alchemy.Collection: Heart
only through new words might new worlds be called into orderCollection: Order
Talk to strangers when the family fails and friends lead you astray when Buddha laughs and Jesus weeps and it turns out God is gay. 'Cause angels and messiahs love can come in many forms: in the hallways of your projects, or the fat girl in your dorm, and when you finally take the time to see what they’re about perhaps you find them lonely or their wisdom trips you out.Collection: Girl
I surrendered my beliefs and found myself at the tree of life injecting my story into the veins of leaves only to find that stories like forests are subject to seasonsCollection: Tree
she stuck a bookmark in my heart and walked awayCollection: Heart
My love is my soul's imagination. How do I love you? Imagine.Collection: Love You
There is no music more powerful than hip-hop. No other music so purely demands an instant affirmative on such a global scale. When the beat drops, people nod their heads, “yes,” in the same way that they would in conversation with a loved one, a parent, professor, or minister.Collection: Powerful
The wind is the moon's imagination wandering.Collection: Moon
Art can play a major role. I look at art as an alternative source of energy, the same way we might look at wind or solar or lithium batteries.Collection: Art
I think that good writing is based on good reading. Maybe it's not about writing today, maybe it's about reading today. Maybe it's about finding the sort of book you would never read.Collection: Book
Some rather seek up high Than dig and grind that inner truthCollection: Grind
intelligence is intuitive you needn't learn to love unless you've been taught to fear and hateCollection: Hate
I think art can really serve to inspire a movement - and, of course, it has in the past. The Civil Rights movement wouldn't have the same resonance without the songs from everyone from Pete Seeger to Odetta to James Brown.Collection: Song
The hero is the person who's afraid to run away.Collection: Running
Fax me a fact, and I'll telegram a hologram.Collection: Fax
I dance for no reason, for reasons you can't dance, Call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance You can't learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts Spirit, soul, can't be store-bought.Collection: Soul