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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
Black
Shouldn
Rappers
Able
Criticism
Esoteric
Ideas
Guess
Ghetto
Look
Outside
Aspire
Looks
Events
Rapper
Take
Influence
Rap
Idea
Current
History
Currents
Containment

More quotes by Saul Williams

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I don't really believe in writer's block or anything like that. If I'm not feeling words, I may pick up an instrument and play with sounds or delve into different types of creativity and expression.
Saul Williams
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Jay Z and President Bush have a lot in common, that same brash confidence
Saul Williams
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When I wake up in the morning, the first things that I see are the clouds. They're right there. I look out my window now and there's always, always a black bird of some sort on the ledge there. Usually I wake up and look at the birds.
Saul Williams
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Сommercial hip-hop is not youth rebellion, not when the heroes of hip-hop like Puffy are taking pictures with Donald Trump and the heroes of capitalism - you know that's not rebellion. That's not the street - that's Wall Street.
Saul Williams
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Books are carefully folded forests/void of autumn/bound from the sun
Saul Williams
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I'm very excited about the resurgence of vinyl which seems to parallel a growing interest in live performance.
Saul Williams
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I think everything has its place. So if the ideas or the fluidity isn't coming in writing, maybe it's related to ingestions.
Saul Williams
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The music aids the message, it's there to punctuate and abbreviate and shape the silence
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.
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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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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Honestly, I don't always want to get up in the mornings, but I do anyway.
Saul Williams
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American culture is often so self-consumed that we often think that our problems are just our problems.
Saul Williams
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The downfall of the industry seems to actually be good for art. I think the industry will find their way once the focus shifts from its greed-based origins, downsizes, and begins to support creative visions that speak to our times and shifting ideals.
Saul Williams
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There's so much to be found in literature, especially if you don't have the money to travel or the means to get out of your neighborhood or get off work.
Saul Williams
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I dance for no reason, for reasons you can't dance, Call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance You can't learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts Spirit, soul, can't be store-bought.
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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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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The most powerful political voices are those with a different way of seeing and processing the world and the sounds that emanate from it.
Saul Williams
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It's crazy when you see very little reflection between what's played on the radio and what people are talking about in the streets. It lets you know how far off we are from a real movement.
Saul Williams