Saul Williams Discusses Teaching the Next Generation of Activists

From poetry to music to acting to filmmaking, Saul Williams doesn’t stay in one lane. You may recall seeing him last year in Ryan Coogler’s Oscar-winning smash Sinners, his directorial effort Neptune Frost, or in his debut feature, the Cannes and Sundance Audience Award-winning Slam. Maybe you encountered him through his guest features on songs from contemporary hip-hop stars like Denzel Curry or on canonical classics like Blackalicious‘ Blazing Arrow. Regardless of where you are introduced to Williams, he leaves a lasting impression, an artist whose confidence in his vision makes his work essential.  

Williams’ newest project is Leap Life, a journey through spoken word, jazz, hip-hop, ambience, and West African rhythms. The title is inspired by his birthday, 29 February. This may sound like a challenging listen, but it is inviting if you are willing to press play and let Williams dazzle you with his creative vision. Taking the ride and trusting the process was essential to creating Leap Life for its architect, too.

“It’s always an experiment, and more than anything, I’m not operating from fear. I feel like this album signifies for me personally a way of stepping into warrior mode,” Williams notes when speaking to PopMatters. “What I mean by that is that for the last two years, I’ve been pretty active and vocal in speaking out about what’s happening in the world, speaking out against crimes against humanity, and all that’s happening. I am using social media, but I am not an influencer. I am a poet and musician. Leap Life is me shifting gears. The most powerful impact I can have is through the medium I am most engaged with, and that’s poetry and music for me. With that comes a lot of excitement because I do feel like the music is aligned with the moment; it’s a clear representation of where I am right now and what I want to see in music.”

Williams aims to deliver something provocative with Leap Life, an answer to the lack of response to the state of the union. He isn’t as surprised by the focus on music as entertainment rather than protest. “Music, and that speaks through many genres, has operated as an arm of state propaganda. It has been the place where people go to let off steam and escape, to seek and feel distraction,” he says. “Just like with television series and film, these things are used by the system. You’re tired when you come home from work, and instead of using that energy to ask why people aren’t paid better or why this system is propped up against us, we have a small amount of time to disengage. Art has been used to help us disengage.” 

With Leap Life, Saul Williams has done something else entirely. It engages the pleasure centers as well as the intellect and hopefully inspires action. “My argument is that art traditionally has been used to engage us,” he explains. “If you think of a steam engine, we can go to music to let off steam, but we could also use music to direct that steam. Social movements have always utilized music to help direct steam and to mobilize people. It is more than about time that music, and art in general, is reawakened. Art has been used to hold up the system as opposed to questioning it more often than not, especially recently. I think that we have arrived where we are right now, partially because of that.” 

He continues, “Pop is just what’s popular, and we can always shift that. It may take a conscious decision. It will also take a hypnotic or seductive beat. Leap Life is there to help provide that sort of seductive force.” 

Leap Life is best listened to end-to-end, but it also contains several highly addictive standalone tracks that provide an accessible point of entry. However, Williams wasn’t consciously trying to include multiple tracks that could court a pop audience.  

“Those tracks just appeared, but I do think that it’s important that an album has points of entry for the listener. This whole process has been one of alignment and things just taking their proper place. I didn’t even go into this thinking I was making an album, not until the very end. Most of these tracks, I was just working on them. I didn’t know when the public would ever, if ever, hear them,” he says.

It took longtime friend and collaborator Carlos Niño to push Saul Williams to commit to making Leap Life. “Carlos said to me, ‘You are in town for a month. I know you are going to travel forever. I can get the studio right now. Let’s do it right fucking now.’ And so we went in and did it,” he explains. 

Big Dada released Leap Life, and they immediately responded to the potential. “They listened to it and told me they heard at least five, maybe even seven, singles. I know what that means for a record company. I know that means, ‘Holy shit, we got something here,'” he recalls. “Making potential hit singles wasn’t intentional, but that’s also part of my relationship to music. I am looking to dance. I am not really listening to lyrics first. I am looking to be seduced by the music first. For example, I have friends who are surprised that I’m listening to Future or Playboi Carti, but I understand the energy of it. Then what I hate is that when I do get to the point of listening to the lyrics, they take me out of it.”

As an artist known for provocative words and imagery that rewards dissection, Saul Williams hasn’t abandoned that part of his audience on Leap Life. Rather, he has calibrated his message and delivered it in music that entices. 

“Of course, I am aware that many people who listen to my music go there for the lyrics, but I am also thinking of the non-listening public, the people who are not fans, the people who encounter me for the first time because it’s played on the radio like that. Maybe they’re just seduced by liking the energy, and then they really listen and have a holy shit moment,” he explains. “I approach music with that same level of naivete. I am grateful it has stayed with me. My first layer of listening is just about how it sounds. If it sounds like something I’ve never heard before, I appreciate that, and I am aware of the fact. We’re constantly looking to expand that listening base and to engage more people that need this news and a new generation of listeners.”

Leap Life was literally years in the making. Saul Williams started on it during the pandemic, first making beats, then considering a project that sounded like a film score with spoken-word elements, then a Vivaldi-inspired period of chopping up music and connecting with Niño, who invited Williams to meet up while he was on tour with André 3000. When Niño heard what Williams had been working on, he immediately saw a through-line that wasn’t even apparent to the creator. 

“When I shared it with him, I was like, ‘I don’t know if this is an album; it might be three different albums.’ Then I played him all of it, and he saw it as one whole album. I told him I didn’t know how it fits together, and he just said, ‘I do. Send all the demos to me.’ I sent them to him, and the next day he sent back a sequence that became the final sequence of the album,” Williams says.

“Carlos told me, ‘You dabble in different creative worlds. You travel a lot. I feel like the music should be like you, should represent all the different worlds you go through, and he knew that I was born on a leap year, and he said it should be called Leap Life. So we even kept that name as the marker, and that’s how it came together. I didn’t know I was working on an album, and I didn’t know these songs would fit together as an album because Carlos had that vision.”

Leap Life is stacked with notable collaborators, including Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack, Moor Mother, Gonjasufi, Georgia Anne Muldrow, and Jimetta Rose, among others. All are friends of either Williams or Niño. In fact, Williams has an unreleased solo album that features him, Ganjasufi, and Del Naja. “It’s called The Plastic Shields, and it is fucking awesome. I keep asking them about when we are going to release it,” Williams says. 

Even at this stage of a storied and acclaimed career, Saul Williams is not immune to unpleasant surprises. His voice on current affairs has created some surprising rifts and caused some soul-searching and tie-severing. “The most shocking thing to me has been the realization that not everybody I thought was on my team is actually on my team. It’s really the last two and a half years since things have gone down in Palestine.

“There’s been a huge kind of revelation in terms of friends, associates, ex-friends, ex-associates. It comes as a grand surprise to me that some people would condone certain behaviors or justify certain crimes. I mean, who have been in my house, that I’ve dined with, who have played huge roles in my career, who have supported me in film or music or literature. Some are people I thought I’d always be connected to because I thought we shared an allyship,” he explains. “If you asked me five years ago about who my crew is, there are some people I would have named who I now realize could never be part of my crew.”

However, this culling has also shown him who is really on his side. “It was a sad revelation, but I’ve also gained something much larger than that, including this album and this connection, this reconnection with [label] Big Dada, who also released my first single back in 1997. There is some full-circle stuff, and there is a lot of magic in the air for me as well. The first time I flew to Los Angeles to perform, Carlos flew me out. There are also beautiful movements in this where I feel like everything is in its place, and everything is aligned. I am grateful for that.”