Saul Williams has done a little bit of everything. He’s an actor, a poet, a spoken-word performer, a musician and a writer. Since we first discovered him in the movie Slam -- which he helped write -- we’ve been fascinated by him, his energy and his words. Since then, we’ve seen him perform twice. Once after the release of his first album Amethyst Rock Star we saw him perform a full-on rock show. The last time we caught Williams was at Chop Suey. He was working on his second book of poems at the time and he performed many of them as well as some of his older works. The shows were as different from each other as each book and CD he releases is different from all of his others.

Late last year, he put out his third album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, which he released as a digital download and allowed people to pay what they wanted to for it. As is typical for Williams, it sounded very different from his other two records, though it came from the same place all of his work does: a conviction that this world needs healing. Niggy Tardust is a powerful, high-energy affair full of strong words and jokes. It’s an album of many levels and sounds like nothing we’ve ever heard.

Tomorrow night, Saul Williams is performing at Neumos. In advance of that, we got a chance to talk with him last month.

Niggy Tardust sounds to me a lot more like Amethyst Rock Star and less like your early music stuff. It sounds like you’ve gotten away from strict hip hop, if you ever did strict hip hop.
Very true. I was trying to get away from it with Amethyst and what was strange about that is that Rick Rubin was trying to deter me from doing that. I was naive enough to pull it off the way I did (laughs). This time, the sort of camaraderie and mentorship that I was kinda looking for with Rick Rubin, I actually got with Trent Reznor. He really upheld my vision and even stuff he shared with me musically fit perfectly within that vision of wanting to create a sound that was as exploratory as it was hard core.

It was more an environment that allowed you to gestate your ideas?
Trent stayed quiet. He never... His suggestions were so rare. I felt like a kid that was getting constant approval from a parent. He was like, ‘Wow, that’s great! Wow, that’s amazing! I love what you’re doing, keep doing it!’ You know, that’s what I would get.

That must have been exciting for you.
Well it was great for me. Fans think of me as some kind of confident guy that decided to move in a particular direction, but I’ve had to fight everyone along the way.

Can you compare the last album and this album? Which one are you happier with?
Well, I’m most happy with the latest product just because it is the latest evidence I have of my own growth. And recording, for me, is really the way I have of recording my own growth over the years, you know?

I can’t really listen to the self-titled album, the last album, either. I never could listen to that. I could for a second, But after a minute it was gone for me, you know? Particularly with that album I found the songs while I was touring. And you know, songs are just like band mates, you get to know them a lot better when you take them on the road.

Cause you’re with them every night over and over and over again.
Exactly. You awake them every night and get to visit different aspects of them and see how they respond to this and that and the other.

This time I took the energy that I had from finding all that stuff on the stage and I would leave the stage and go directly into the studio. There’s a kind of high that I found on stage, or a certain stoned that I entered into while I was performing so much off that last album. I was re-invigorated to perform. You know, my background is as a performer, but for the last couple of years it seems like I’ve been earning my living more as a writer, you know? While touring off of the last album, I realized that the reason I was writing so much was mainly because I didn’t want to perform bullshit, so I had to create my own material, you know? (laughs). Now the reward about creating material that I’m excited about performing is that I get to perform it.

It shows. This album is so full of energy.
There’s a lot of energy on that album and life and a lot of colors… You know, I haven’t performed a lot of the songs off that album really yet. But I know that people have a sort of idea that it’s gonna be fun to hear and see those songs being performed.

I read somewhere that you didn’t write the words for the songs, you let the music drive the writing of the words. Is that right?
Yes. I would say, gosh, every song on this album came music first.

Can you tell me a little bit about the character Niggy Tardust. Who is he? Where’d he come from and why is that character even here with us?
Well, I characterize Niggy Tardust as an angel of mercy. You know, I think that in the face of America and our changing times there’s a lot to be said, a lot that could be said, and a lot of ways that it could be said. And if, you know, your revolutionary rock star comes in the form of someone who’s singing and dancing versus someone who’s screaming and shooting, then that’s an angel of mercy (laughs).

Secondly, I’d say that he’s a hybrid, which is to say: He is not black. No. Not that he is not black. He is black, He is white. He is Asian. He is, you know, Native American. He is all of these things. He is, to me, the embodiment of what it truly means to be American, which is not the divisiveness of our racial teachings, but the idea of all of these things bleeding into one.

You know, I used to live in Brazil and one of the things I liked about that culture was Carnival. What I loved about Carnival was every group of Brazilian culture celebrated Carnival as this beautiful thing in Brazilian culture. And they acknowledged everything like, ‘Yes. The drumming comes from Africa. The costumes come from Native Americans. The flags come from Portugal.’ They could point to every different role that was played -- some forgivable and some unforgivable -- and still celebrate it together as a whole. It’s just so not the Fourth if July (laughs). And that’s what Niggy Tardust is. He looks at history and says, 'AH! History set the stage.’

He’s the unity we all so desperately need right now.
Exactly. And with humor because the word nigger is abhorrent. But the name Niggy is cute. (laughs)

I was talking to a friend of mine about this interview, another poet, because we discovered your work together and we got to talking about what’s going on around us right now in the country. And it brought this up: A lot of people are talking about concepts like hope and change almost as if they are concepts we’ve all forgotten and left behind and that we need to reclaim them. Do you have hope for where the world is headed right now?
Oh definitely. I mean, I have for ages. From the moment that I started earning my living as a poet, I had hope (laughs). I realized that there was an undercurrent of reality that may not have reached the mainstream yet. I realized that something was happening.

Anytime poetry becomes popular, it resonates as it does because we’re on the cusp of a movement. You wouldn’t have had the civil rights movement if it weren’t for the Harlem Renaissance. You wouldn’t have the hippie love movement of the 60s if it weren’t for the Beat poets that called it into existence. You wouldn’t have had the Black Power movement if it weren’t for the Black Arts movement which preceded it. Any time there is a new, greater sense of clarity or freedom, independence, expression, it’s seems like the first to aim to grasp it are the poets. And once they are able to, their struggle is simply to articulate it. And once their capable of that, then the people are able to articulate it and thus embody it.

Where do you think in that cycle right now?
I think we’re at the turning point. I think it’s all fairly obvious. You know, it’s like the symbols have all come to life, it’s so clear how much symbolism is in the ascendance of someone like Barack Obama, for example. And not in the idea of anyone being a messiah or anything like that. Just the idea of people realizing ‘Wow. It actually would mean a lot.’

How has the experience of asking people to pay what they wanted to for the record been? Do you think it has been a success?
Definitely. It’s really the biggest surprise of the whole experience. While we were recording it, Trent was saying, ‘I feel like we should do something that speaks to our times. Like give it away for free or something.’ Which is, of course, related to the way Radiohead did it and tons of bands did in the past. But we had a certain buzz and momentum that we knew was going to give it a certain projection into a lot of people’s headphones and hearts and minds.

It’s been great because for me because when I put this amount of energy into a project, yeah I want to be able to pay bills and consume a bit and be able to buy nice things for my kids and be able to take a vacation or two. I mean, those things are cool to me. But at the end of the day, I’m much more interested in people hearing my music than whether they chose to pay for it or not.

Thank you again for talking with me.
Thank you man.

Wednesday March 19th // 8pm doors // Neumos // 925 E Pike St // Tickets $15 advance, all ages