After a widely publicized digital “pay what you want” release last fall, the Fader Label will issue Saul Williams’ third album, The Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, on July 8 in CD and vinyl formats. Despite some early standoffish reviews, and much online snickering after producer Trent Reznor announced that less than a quarter of the people who downloaded the album paid for it, the album has proven surprisingly durable. The poet-rapper-actor-musician got a further boost when “List of Demands (Reparations),” a track from his second self-titled album, was used in a Nike commercial. Accordingly, the new version of NiggyTardust features “List of Demands” and four more bonus cuts.
On his website, Williams writes:
The wall of sound that we’ve created is tagged with such graffiti that a passerby would seek out doors and ways to ENTER. Once inside a world defined by dreams come true they’d find aligned with the simplest act of sharing what we treasure. Most people aren’t aware of the world of art and commerce where exploitation strips each artist down to nigger. Each label, like apartheid, multiplies us by our divide and whips us ’til we conform to lesser figures. What falls between the cracks is a pile of records stacked to the heights of talents hidden from the sun. Yet the energy they put into popularizing smut makes a star of a shiny polished gun. The ballot or the bullet for Mohawk or the mullet is a choice between new times and dying days. And the only way to choose is to jump ship from old truths and trust dolphins as we swim through changing ways.
Here’s the track listing for the new and undoubtedly improved NiggyTardust:
- 1. “Black History Month”
- 2. “Convict Colony”
- 3. “Tr(n)igger”
- 4. “Sunday Bloody Sunday”
- 5. “Break”
- 6. “NiggyTardust”
- 7. “DNA”
- 8. “WTF!”
- 9. “Scared Money”
- 10. “Raw”
- 11. “Skin of a Drum”
- 12. “No One Ever Does”
- 13. “Banged and Blown Through”
- 14. “Raised to be Lowered”
- 15. “The Ritual”
- 16. “Pedagogue of Young Gods”
- 17. “World on Wheels”
- 18. “Can’t Hide Love”
- 19. “Gunshots by Computer”
- 20. “List of Demands (Reparations)”
Plug One review: Saul Williams, The Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!
www.saulwilliams.com
www.myspace.com/saulwilliams
Giving people the option of paying what they want for downloading an album may appear foolish to some, however in this day and age of the masses simply downloading whatever they want for free anyway, it may not be so dumb after all in my opinion.
You might as well get something for it instead of nothing.