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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.

Saul Williams

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Saul Williams
Age: 52
Born: 1972
Born: February 29
Actor
Composer
Film Actor
Musician
Poet
Rapper
Screenwriter
Singer
Television Actor
Voice Actor
Writer
Newburgh
New York
Saul Stacey Williams
Ideas
Guess
Ghetto
Look
Outside
Aspire
Looks
Events
Rapper
Take
Influence
Rap
Idea
Current
History
Currents
Containment
Black
Shouldn
Rappers
Able
Criticism
Esoteric

More quotes by Saul Williams

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I was always making up rhymes. But I never thought that poetry would become my life.
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Music has always pushed ahead social movements and can do much more than just dumb down a populace.
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Vulnerability is power.
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There is nothing more negligent than attempting to address a problem one finds on a branch than by censoring the leaves.
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the anchor man thrown overboard has simply rooted us in history's repeating cycle
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What's wrong with hip-hop is the system that controls the definition of it. There needs to be more balance on the airwaves.
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Your library teacher would say, What happens to a generation that doesn't read the Classics? Me, I'm not your library teacher. But I have some of the same questions and concerns, you know?
Saul Williams
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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.
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Dying is something you have no control over. Why waste your life being afraid of it?
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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.
Saul Williams
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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 seasons
Saul Williams
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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.
Saul Williams
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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.
Saul Williams
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I want to connect music to its highest power - which is heightening consciousness and affecting people's reality. That can't be done in normal ways, not according to my experience.
Saul Williams
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A lie preserved in stained glass doesn't make it more true.
Saul Williams
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I have offered myself to the inkwell of the wordsmith that I might be shaped into new terms of being.
Saul Williams
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When I finally decide that I'm ready to get out of bed, it could be the sunlight, it could be the fact that I'm awake, and, OK, first of all, I wake up in the morning because I have to go to the bathroom.
Saul Williams
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I'm somewhat of an empath, I would say. I relate easily to ideas and stories, books, films, music. I'm moved by all of these things. Art in general. But not just art, you know?
Saul Williams
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When I look at certain aspects of popular culture - not everything because I like a lot of things - sometimes my heart breaks a little bit, just a little bit. I begin to ponder what happened to this generation, I don't know.
Saul Williams
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Books are carefully folded forests/void of autumn/bound from the sun
Saul Williams