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

More quotes by Saul Williams

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Music has always pushed ahead social movements and can do much more than just dumb down a populace.
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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Half of the popcorn sh-t that's out there, we know it's popcorn. But we're like, It's my guilty pleasure. I feel like we have more guilty pleasure than actual f - kin' pleasure.
Saul Williams
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If we're gonna progress as a people we are going to realise that, as one of my favourite poets says, the other is a lie. There are no other people. Race is a social construct.
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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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'm a very sensitive person at times. Not just to words that anybody says, but in relationships for example, the people that you open up to, you listen to, you hear - you know? So a lot of times, the key to some of my vulnerability is just through things, simple things - or critiques or whatever - or could be very simple things that are said.
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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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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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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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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American culture is often so self-consumed that we often think that our problems are just our problems.
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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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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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 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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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 hear the weed is really strong in California.
Saul Williams
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I've never believed it's really so important that you conform to the ways of the system in order to beat the system. I think that the system follows a great deal.
Saul Williams
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I think that heartbreak is a good thing.
Saul Williams