Saul Williams

Biography

Saul Stacey Williams (born February 29, 1972) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, musician, poet, writer, and actor. He is known for his blend of poetry and alternative hip-hop, and for his lead roles in the 1998 independent film Slam and the 2013 jukebox musical Holler If Ya Hear Me. His album Saul Williams Meets Carlos Niño & Friends At Treepeople×Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople28 August 2025 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 5 tracks1Sound then Words16:032We would lift our Voice . . .11:513We are calling out in this moment . . .16:454The Water is Rising / as we surpass the firing squad . . .13:315We have work to do . . . (speaking after the concert)5:46 was nominated in the Best Spoken Word Poetry Album category at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards.

Early life and education

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×Black Stacey2004 · SingleSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 3 tracks1Black Stacey (album version)5:272Black Stacey (The Bug remix)5:293List of Demands (Kid606 remix)3:45". He graduated from Morehouse College with a BA in acting and philosophy, then moved to New York City, where he earned an MFA in acting from New York University's Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts. While at New York University, he became part of the New York café poetry scene. He also lived in Brazil as an exchange student from 1988 to 1989.

Poetry

By 1995, Williams had become an open mic poet. In 1996, he won the title of Nuyorican Poets Cafe's Grand Slam Champion. The documentary film SlamNation follows Williams and the other members of the 1996 Nuyorican Poets Slam team (Beau Sia, muMs da Schemer, and Jessica Care Moore) as they compete in the 1996 National Poetry Slam held in Portland, Oregon. The following year, Williams landed the lead role in the 1998 feature film Slam. Williams featured as both a writer and actor in the film, which would win both the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Camera D'Or (Golden Camera).

Music

Around 1998, Williams was also breaking into music. He had performed with such artists as Nas, The Fugees, Blackalicious, Erykah Badu, KRS-One, Zack De La Rocha, De La Soul, Buckethead, and DJ Krust, as well as poets Allen Ginsberg and Sonia Sanchez. After releasing a string of EPs, he released the LP Amethyst Rock Star×Amethyst Rock Star23 October 2001 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 11 tracks1Lalala2:412Penny for a Thought4:343Robeson4:214Tao of Now4:195Fearless3:126Untimely Meditations3:557Om Nia Merican3:06819875:229Coded Language8:4910Our Father7:0611Wine11:05 with producer Rick Rubin in 2001. In September 2004, he released his self-titled album to much acclaim. He played several shows supporting Nine Inch Nails on their European tour in summer 2005, and has also supported The Mars Volta. Williams was invited to the Lollapalooza music festival around that time, and the Chicago stage allowed Williams to attract a wider audience. He appeared on the Nine Inch Nails album Year Zero, and supported the group on their 2006 tour of North America. On the tour, Williams announced that Trent Reznor would co-produce his next album.
This collaboration resulted in 2007's The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!. The album was available only from its website until a physical CD was issued, featuring new tracks and extended album artwork. The first 100,000 customers on the website had the option to download a free lower-quality audio version of the album. The other option was for users to pay $5 to support the artist directly and be given the choice of downloading the higher-quality MP3 version or the lossless FLAC version. The material was produced by Trent Reznor and mixed by Alan Moulder. It was Reznor who said, after his own recent dealings with record labels, that they should release it independently and directly to the audience.
In early 2008, a Nike Sparq Training commercial featured Williams' song "List of Demands (Reparations)×List of Demands (Reparations)2004 · SingleSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 2 tracks1List of Demands (Reparations)3:212List of Demands (Reparations) (Kill Memory Crash remix)5:04". In a November 2008 interview with Wired.com, Williams talked about his forthcoming projects: "There's one album that I'm waist-deep into. I'm aiming to finish it up next month. Trent wants to work on a sequel for Niggy that I think would be cool, and I also have an album and new songs demoed at home that I'm ready to go into the studio and lay down. It’s a complete reflection of how I feel in this country; it's a very transformative time."
Williams' fourth album, Volcanic Sunlight×Volcanic Sunlight18 April 2011 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 13 tracks1Look to the Sun4:072Patience3:513Explain My Heart4:154Triumph6:035Diagram3:466Girls on Saturn2:277Give It Up4:128Dance (single version)3:359Volcanic Sunlight3:5610Rocket3:5211Fall Up4:1712Innocence5:4313New Day5:14, was released on November 11, 2011. Williams showcased the album at London's Hoxton Bar Kitchen on January 26, 2011. Livemusic interviewed Williams on the evening and made a subsequent film, produced by artist Alex Templeton-Ward. When Williams was asked what the point of poetry was, he said: "I'm making this up, I have no idea but here we go. I think that it would be to express, to share, to relieve, to explore. For me, poetry offers some what of a cathartic experience. I am able to move through emotions and emotional experience particularly, you know, break-ups, difficulties in all the things that I may face, whether that is with an industry or a loved one or whomever, there needs to be an infiltration process, like you have a window open over there. That is the purpose of poetry: it is the window that opens, that allows some air in, some other insight, some other possibility so we can explore all that we feel, all that we think but with the space to see more than what we know, because there is so much more than we know. If I didn't open myself to the possibilities of the unknown, then I would be lost."
Williams' fifth album, MartyrLoserKing×MartyrLoserKing29 January 2016 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 12 tracks1Groundwork4:162Horn of the Clock-Bike3:353Ashes2:524Think Like They Book Say3:535The Bear / Coltan as Cotton4:196Burundi4:067The Noise Came From Here2:398Down for Some Ignorance2:259Roach Eggs4:2410All Coltrane Solos at Once3:2411No Different2:2912Homes / Drones / Poems / Drums3:18, was released on January 29, 2016. The first single released from the album was "Burundi", a collaboration with Emily Kokal of Warpaint.
In March 2018, The Kills released their cover of Williams' "List of Demands (Reparations)" and Williams opened for The Kills' sold-out performance at the Regent Theater in Los Angeles on August 13, 2018.
In June 2026, Williams released "Conspiracy" as the lead single for his album Leap Life×Leap Life27 August 2026 · Studio albumSpotifyYouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 14 tracks1Baobab Constellation6:192Mazahua5:113I Think I Get It Now4:494Great, Great - Grandmother3:445The Dagger2:596Controlled Is Not Controllable3:40713 Moons3:578Une Photographie6:589Not Everything for Sale2:5610Robot Slave3:3611Conspiracy3:4512Vengeful Spirit2:3013Friends I Ain’t Met Yet1:5814Coming Forth8:56. The album is scheduled to release on August 28, 2026.

Writing

As a writer, Williams has been published in The New York Times, Esquire, Bomb Magazine, and African Voices, as well as releasing four collections of poetry. As a poet and musician, Williams has toured and lectured across the world, appearing at many universities and colleges. In his interview in the book Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam, Williams explained why he creates within so many genres: "It's not that I balance those arts out, all the different arts balance me out. So, that there is a certain type of emotion that is more easily accessible through music than poetry... some things are meant to be written, some are meant to be sung, some things are meant to be hummed, some things are made to be yelled, and so that's just how life works."
In January 2009, he released NGH WHT – The Dead Emcee Scrolls with The Arditti Quartet, a reading of his 2006 poetry book of the same name. This collaboration with Thomas Kessler (who also set Williams' spoken-word track, "said the shotgun to the head" to music) was released with two payment options: listeners could download chapters 18 to 22 of the 27-minute composition in MP3 format for free, or could download the entire 33-chapter composition in lossless AIFF format for $6, along with the isolated vocal and quartet multitracks. The entire paid download totalled in size at 563 megabytes. Williams contributed to two tracks on the 2011 album Baba Love by Arthur H.

Acting

Williams starred in Slam (1998) and Today (2012). On stage, he was chosen for the lead role in Holler If Ya Hear Me, a Broadway musical featuring music by Tupac Shakur. Though it features Shakur's music, the musical is not about his life. It is an original script written by Todd Kreidler. Rolling Stone described the production as "the first hip-hop jukebox musical in Broadway history". The show opened on June 19, 2014. Williams' role in the musical landed him an interview on The Colbert Report, where he spoke about his career and performed a poem entitled "Amethyst Rocks".
He received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Actor at the 9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021, for his performance in the film Akilla's Escape.
In 2025 he had a role as a preacher in Ryan Coogler's horror film Sinners.

Directing

In 2021, Neptune Frost, which Williams wrote and co-directed with Anisia Uzeyman, premiered in Cannes at Directors' Fortnight. The film was supported by a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2018.

Personal life

Williams is a vegan. He is a vocal critic of the war on terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among his better-known works are the anti-war anthems "Not in My Name×Not in My NameMarch 2003 · EPSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 8 tracks1Pledge of Resistance1:302September 12th3:593Bloodletting4:104The Pledge (DJ Goo mix)3:025Not in Our Name (DJ Spooky mix)4:286The Pledge (Ill Bootleg MP3 remix)3:537The Pledge (Coldcut remix)5:368Give Blood (Phantom Dancehall mix)6:26" and "Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare)". In 2011, he added his name to Occupy Musicians, supporting the worldwide Occupy movement against income inequality. He identifies as queer.
Williams and Marcia Jones, a visual artist and art professor, began a relationship in 1995 as collaborative artists on the Brooklyn performance art and spoken word poetry circuit. A collection of poems by Williams entitled S/HE is a series of reflections on the demise of his relationship with Jones. Jones created the cover artwork for The Seventh Octave, images throughout S/HE in response to Williams, and set-designed his 2001 album Amethyst Rock Star×Amethyst Rock Star23 October 2001 · Studio albumSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 11 tracks1Lalala2:412Penny for a Thought4:343Robeson4:214Tao of Now4:195Fearless3:126Untimely Meditations3:557Om Nia Merican3:06819875:229Coded Language8:4910Our Father7:0611Wine11:05.
Williams has a son with choreographer Fatima Robinson.
On February 29, 2008 (his 36th birthday), Williams married actress Persia White after a five-year relationship. They met when he made a guest appearance on the series Girlfriends. On January 17, 2009, White announced via her Myspace blog that she and Williams were no longer together.
He is married to actress Anisia Uzeyman. He lived in Paris for four years but now resides in Los Angeles.
Williams' great grandmother immigrated through Ellis Island from Haiti in 1917.

Studio albums

Amethyst Rock Star (2001)
Saul Williams (2004)
The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! (2007)
NGH WHT (2009) (with Arditti Quartet)
Volcanic Sunlight (2011)
MartyrLoserKing (2016)
Encrypted & Vulnerable (2019)
Unanimous Goldmine (The Original Soundtrack of Neptune Frost) (2022)
Leap Life (2026)

Compilation albums

Real Niggery Volume One (2005)
These Mthrfckrs: MartyrLoserKing - Remixes, B-Sides, & Demos (2016)

Singles

"Elohim (1972)×Elohim (1972)1 May 1998 · SingleSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 6 tracksA1Elohim (1972) (Original Edit)A2Elohim (1972) Part 2A3Elohim (1972) (Acapella)B1Twice The First Time (Original Edit)B2Elohim (1972) (Instrumental)B3Elohim (1972) Part 2 (Instrumental)" (1998)
"Penny for a Thought" b/w "Purple Pigeons" (2000)
"List of Demands (Reparations)×List of Demands (Reparations)2004 · SingleSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 2 tracks1List of Demands (Reparations)3:212List of Demands (Reparations) (Kill Memory Crash remix)5:04" (2004)
"Black Stacey×Black Stacey2004 · SingleSpotify (search)YouTube Music (search)Tracklist · 3 tracks1Black Stacey (album version)5:272Black Stacey (The Bug remix)5:293List of Demands (Kid606 remix)3:45" (2005)
"The Flaw You Worship" (2018)

Film

Underground Voices (1996)
Slam (1998)
SlamNation (1998)
I'll Make Me a World (1999)
Downtown 81 (voice) (2000)
King of the Korner (2000)
K-PAX (2001)
The N-Word (2004)
Lackawanna Blues (2005)
Today (2012)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (2017)
Akilla's Escape (2020)
Neptune Frost (2021)
Blink Twice (2024)
Sinners (2025)

Television

Girlfriends (2003)
The Colbert Report (2014)