Tricky philosophy: Saul Williams

When an actor performs a part, he often becomes that character, extending it to every facet of his life — including interviews.

Saul Williams is an acclaimed musician, a published poet, and a trained actor who earned a master’s degree in acting at New York University and has starred in several movies, including the award-winning 1998 film Slam. When he refers to himself as a trickster, one can’t help but remember that Niggy Tardust, the protagonist of his new album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust!, is also a “comical absurdist.”

“Although people’s relationship to me is often in very serious tones, like, ‘Oh, Saul Williams, his poetry is very moving,’ anyone who knows me personally thinks of me as a prankster, a practical joker and someone who always has something funny to say,” Williams says.

Just because Niggy Tardust is something of an elaborate put-on inspired by comic-book superheroes and David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust character, however, doesn’t mean Saul Williams’ ideas shouldn’t be taken seriously. He notes that the word “nigger” evolved from the Niger River in West Africa, and suggests that some black people unconsciously use the word to maintain their ties to Africa. “It could be the only word in the English lexicon of actual African origin,” he says.

“It’s hard to get everybody on the intellectual page,” he continues. “The fact of the matter is we are creating music from our block, from our minds and from our hearts, and a lot of that music has the word ‘nigger’ in it. It’s going to be really hard to do a recall on the music.” The solution, he suggests, is to dismantle the word’s power by any means necessary – whether through overuse, or through broad satires such as Niggy Tardust.

Williams has recorded his share of commentaries on gangstas and thugs, from “Om,” a well-known spoken-word piece made in the late ’90s, to “Tr(n)igger,” which uses a sample from Public Enemy’s “Welcome to the Terrordome” to connote oppressed peoples as the weapon and the prey. “The trigger is you! The nigger is you!” he sings. Generally, contrary to many other African-American intellectuals, Williams doesn’t talk down to his audience by preaching an exalted level of consciousness that no human can possibly achieve.

Niggy Tardust is a broad satire, and a tacit acknowledgment that black people have complex belief systems that sometimes seem antithetical to their very survival. It contains thumping beats by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, and is a throwback to Public Enemy’s early ’90s heyday, a time when groups such as Meat Beat Manifesto and Consolidated mashed hip-hop beats with screeching industrial noise. Unexpectedly, it also includes a brilliant cover of U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” updating the classic protest of the Irish Civil War into an anti-war attack against the United States’ Middle East misadventures.

Last month, Williams and Reznor released Niggy Tardust as a free download (or for a $5 donation) on the website NiggyTardust.com. “This album is the freest I’ve ever felt,” Williams says.

When Williams returns to Atlanta Thurs., Dec. 6, he won’t perform any Niggy Tardust material. He’s appearing alongside Amir Sulaiman, a spoken-word artist whom he calls “a friend.” Expect to hear selections from Williams’ four books of verse (including last year’s The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop). Williams’ official tour for Niggy Tardust starts next March at SXSW in Austin, Texas, and reaches Atlanta sometime in April.

Firebrand soothsayer may be the image most people associate with Williams. He calls himself a poet by accident, however, and claims he was originally an MC from Newburgh, N.Y. (“The roughest hood in New York,” he claims), who just happened to stumble into Manhattan’s famed Nuyorican Poets Cafe on a fortuitous night in 1995.

“I was in graduate school for acting when I discovered poetry,” he says. “I like poetry. I like reciting my poetry. One, it opens up a forum for creative and intellectual dialogue. It’s opened a lot of doors for me, but it has also opened a lot of doors in people’s hearts and minds to thinking about hip-hop.”