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

Saul Williams
The Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!
Fader Label

Rating: ★★★½☆ 

Saul Williams’ third album, The Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust, is a fantastic and portentous collaboration with Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails. This isn’t a homage to industrial-strength pop, however, but a cauldron of sonic refernces, among them David Bowie’s glam fantasia Ziggy Stardust, Prince’s The Black Album, The The’s mid-80s spiritual-political diatribe Mind Bomb and TV on the Radio’s gospelly arena-punk. Near its center lies “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” a surprisingly effective cover of U2′s classic protest against the Irish-British war. “Scared Money” rides on a ska-reggae beat; “Tr(n)igger” collapses upon a snippet of Public Enemy’s “Welcome to the Terrordome,” specifically the line that indicts Huey Newton’s assassination “by the hands of a nigger pulled the trigger.” It’s a broken mirror, both a triumphant salute and a vicious satire of black culture, identity, contradiction and stereotype.

With so much frezied noise surrounding him, it’s unsurprising that Williams begins to wind down near the second half. “Banged and Blown Through” has a jackhammer percussive bass and a wash of atmospheric synthesizers, but Williams sings it like a ballad. He talks of being a “broken instrument” looking for inspiration, as if the songs he sang before nearly snapped him in half. “Raise to be Lowered” returns to the murmuring black rock of his 2001 debut, Amethyst Rock Star.

As a coarse statement of uncompromised blackness and a digital music prank, NiggyTardust is heavy stuff. When released on Halloween as a digital-only album that, like Radiohead’s In Rainbows, could be downloaded for free or for a small fee, it undoubtedly landed with a thud in the email mailboxes of critics who scrambled to assess its contents, and its reputation suffered as a result. Yes, Williams has a tendency to power-pack his songs with too many ideas and bizarre sounds, and it can be a chore to pick through the morass. A few of the numbers, particularly “Scared Money,” teeter over from awkward-sounding concepts and abstract poetry.

But the album rewards repeated listens. “Niggy Tardust,” in particular, snaps along hardcore punk thrusts and electronic noise and has some memorable lines. One in particular rings true: “Hardly nervous, suffice to say he understands his purpose/Threshold king of everything/A comical absurdist.”

Saul Williams’ The Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust is available at niggytardust.com.

Last week, Saul Williams made a surprise announcement when he declared that he would release his next album on Halloween. Produced by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! is the spoken-word legend’s third album, and first since his 2004 self-titled disc.

“The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! is the lovechild of Trent and me,” says Williams in a press release. “The Niggytardust concept sets me free to do more on stage with costume, etc. than one might expect from a regular Saul Williams show. It allows me to put my theatre training to use. I’ve also thought long and hard about all the discussion surrounding racial epithets etc. and chose this title as a means of furthering the dialogue while also showing how creativity will outlive and outshine hatred of any kind.”

Williams will take a page from the Radiohead playbook and sell his album for free or for a $5 donation. But unlike Radiohead — which angered fans by selling a low-quality 160kb version of In Rainbows — Williams will offer high-quality formats such as 192kb, 320kb, and FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). The 320kb and FLAC formats are only available to those that make the $5 donation. NiggyTardust is on sale at www.saulwilliams.com.

The press coverage surrounding Niggytardust has focused on Reznor’s involvement and its digital sales gimmick, but it may also turn out to be a significant artistic statement, too. Despite his storied history as a sometime actor, published poet, musician and philosopher, Williams has yet to make a full-length album that mirrors his ambitions. With Niggytardust, the third attempt may be the charm.

The track listing is below.

• 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”

www.saulwilliams.com
www.myspace.com/saulwilliams