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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
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Rap

More quotes by Saul Williams

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The most powerful political voices are those with a different way of seeing and processing the world and the sounds that emanate from it.
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It was always important to me to be that kid who could rock the party as well as rock the English professor's mind.
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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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I've always been inspired by a lot of work coming out of the UK
Saul Williams
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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.
Saul Williams
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Legislation won't necessarily start a riot. But the right song can make someone pick up a chair.
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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.
Saul Williams
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It's not the rules everywhere, you know? That's not the rules everywhere - that things have to be dumbed down in order to become massively popular. And that hasn't always been the rule, even in America.
Saul Williams
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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.
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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If not then you must be trying to hear us and in such cases we cannot be heard. We remain in the darkness, unseen. In the center of unpeeled bananas, we exist. Uncolored by perception. Clothed to the naked eye. Five senses cannot sense the fact of our existence. And that's the only fact. In fact, there are no facts.
Saul Williams
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Dying is something you have no control over. Why waste your life being afraid of it?
Saul Williams
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The organization of self, and all self-aligning principles would be those that I promote.
Saul Williams
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Niggy Tardust' is the voice of a generation, a generation that does not define itself simply by what it's born into.
Saul Williams
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I have a very family-like connection to hip-hop, which is why it frustrates me so much.
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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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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My father's a preacher, my mother's a teacher, thus... I rhyme.
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 was fed by the music I listened to as a kid. Hip-hop fed me psychologically, spiritually, politically. I learned from that music.
Saul Williams