Saul Williams

At 52 years old, Saul Williams has this physical status:

Saul Stacey Williams (born February 29, 1972) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, singer, poet, writer, and actor.

He is best known for his blend of poetry and experimental hip hop, as well as his lead roles in the 1998 independent film Slam and the 2013 jukebox musical If Ya Hear Me.

Early life

Saul Stacey Williams was born in Newburgh, New York, on February 29, 1972, the youngest of three children. He attended Newburgh Free Academy, where he wrote his song "Black Stacey." He earned his MFA in acting and philosophy from Morehouse College's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts, and then migrated to New York City. He was a participant in the New York café poetry scene while attending New York University. He lived in Brazil from 1988 to 1989 as an exchange student.

Personal life

Williams is a vegan. He is a vocal critic of the war on Terrorism and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. "Not in My Name" and "Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare) are two of his best-known compositions. He added his name to Occupy Musicians in 2011, supporting the worldwide Occupy movement against income inequality. He refers to himself as a queer.

Williams and Marcia Jones, a Brooklyn performance artist and art professor, began their collaboration in 1995 as collaborative artists on the Brooklyn performance art and spoken word poetry tour. Saturn, their daughter, was born in 1996. S/HE, Williams' collection of poems, is a series of reflections on his exacerbation of his friendship with Jones. Jones designed his 2001 album Amethyst Rock Star, produced the cover art for The Seventh Octave, photographs of Williams throughout S/HE in reaction to Williams' appearance, and set-design of his 2001 album Amethyst Rock Star. Saturn appeared with her father on her 2008 concert tour. Williams also has a son named Xuly with renowned choreographer Fatima Robinson.

Williams married actress Persia White after a five-year marriage on February 29, 2008 (his 36th birthday). They met when he made a guest appearance on the programme Girlfriends. White revealed on her Myspace blog on January 17, 2009, that she and Williams were no longer together. He is now married to actress Anisia Uzeyman. He lived in Paris for four years but now resides in Los Angeles.

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Career

Williams had been a public mic poet by 1995. In 1996, he became the Grand Slam Champion of Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Williams and the other members of the 1996 Nuyorican Poets Slam team (Beau Sia, muMs da Schemer, and Jessica Care Moore) compete in the national Poetry Slam in Portland, Oregon, according to the documentary film SlamNation. Williams took over as the lead in the 1998 feature film Slam for the second year. In the film, Williams appears as both a writer and actor, and as a winner of both the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Camera D'Or (Golden Camera).

Williams began to play guitar in 1998. He had performed with Nas, The Fugees, Christian Alvarez, Erykah Badu, KRS-One, Zack De La Rocha, De La Rocha, Buckethead, and DJ Krust, as well as poets Allen Ginsberg and Sonia Sanchez. He released the LP Amethyst Rock Star with producer Rick Rubin in 2001 after a string of EPs. He debuted his self-titled album in September 2004, gaining acclaim. On their European tour in summer 2005, he appeared at numerous shows promoting Nine Inch Nails, as well as The Mars Volta. Around that time, Williams was invited to the Lollapalooza music festival, and the Chicago stage brought Williams to a larger audience. He appeared on Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero and assisted the group on its 2006 tour of North America. On the tour, Williams revealed that Trent Reznor would co-produce his next album.

This collaboration culminated in NiggyTardust's Inevitable Rise and Liberation in 2007. The album was only available from its website until a physical CD was released, with new tracks and extended album artwork. The first 100,000 visitors on the site had the ability to download a free lower-quality audio version of the album. The other alternative was for users to pay $5 to help the artist directly and be given the option of purchasing the higher-quality MP3 version or the lossless FLAC version. Trent Reznor and Alan Moulder mixed the pieces. Reznor, who had recently worked with record companies, felt that they should unveil it more widely and directly to the public.

A Nike Sparq Training commercial featured Williams' "List of Wants (Reparations)" in early 2008. Williams talked about his forthcoming projects in a November 2008 interview with Wired.com: "I'm waist-deep into one album." I'm planning to finish it up next month. I think this would be cool, and I also have an album and new songs on display at home, so I'm able to go into the studio and lay down. It's a complete reflection of how I feel in this world; it's a pivotal moment.

Volcanic Sunlight, Williams' fourth album, was released on November 11, 2011. On January 26, 2011, Williams performed the album at Hoxton Bar Kitchen in London. On the evening, Livemusic interviewed Williams and made a sequel film directed by artist Alex Templeton-Ward. When Williams was asked what poetry was like, he replied, "I'm making this up, I have no idea," he said, but here we go. To explore, I believe it would be to express rather than to reveal. Poetry, for me, is something like a cathartic experience. I'm able to move through emotions and emotional turmoil, particularly break-ups, challenges in all the areas that I might face, whether it be with an employer or a loved one, or wherever you are located, there needs to be an infiltration process. Poetry is the window that opens, that allows some air in, some other insight, or some other possibility so we can explore all that we think, but there is so much more than we know. I would be lost if I didn't open myself to the possibilities of the unknown."

MartyrLoserKing, Williams' fifth album, was released on January 29, 2016. "Burundi," Emily Kokal of Warpaint's collaboration, was the first single from the album.

Williams' "List of Inquiries" and Williams' "Reparations") and Williams opened for The Kills' sold-out appearance at the Regent Theater in Los Angeles on August 13, 2018.

Williams has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Bomb Magazine, and African Voices, as well as four collections of poetry. Williams has performed and lectured around the world, appearing at many universities and colleges. He has performed at many universities and colleges as a writer and composer. Williams explains why he creates within such diverse fields in an interview with Words in Your Face: A Taking a Look at the New York City Poetry Slam: "It's not that I balance those arts out; all the different arts balance me out." So, that there is a certain degree of emotion that is more easily understood by music than poetry; some things are supposed to be written, some are supposed to be sung, some are supposed to be sung, and some are supposed to be yelled, and other things are made to be yelled, and so forth is life.

With The Arditti Quartet, he published NGH WHT – The Dead Emcee Scrolls in January 2009, a reading of his 2006 poetry book of the same name. This collaboration with Thomas Kessler (who also put Williams' spoken-word track "head" to music) was released in two payment options: listeners could download chapters 18 to 22 of the 27-minute composition in MP3 format for $6, as well as the isolated vocal and quartet multitracks. The entire paid download had a 563 megabytes in total. Williams appeared on two tracks on Arthur H.'s album Baba Love in 2011.

Williams appeared in Slam (1998 and 2012). He was chosen for the lead role in Holler If Ya Hear Me, a Broadway musical with Tupac Shakur's music, on stage. Despite the fact that Shakur's music appears in the program, it is not about him. It's an original script written by Todd Kreidler. "The first hip-hop jukebox musical in Broadway history," Rolling Stone described it. On June 19, 2014, the exhibition debuted on June 19, 2014. Williams' participation in the musical earned him an interview on The Colbert Report, where he discussed his work and performed a poem titled "Amethyst Rocks."

At the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021 for his role in Akilla's Escape, he received a nomination for Best Actor.

In 2021, Neptune Frost, which Williams wrote and co-directed with Anisia Uzeyman, premiered in Cannes at Directors' Fortnight. In 2018, a highly funded Kickstarter campaign helped the film.

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