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‘I’m a fan of rebels’: Saul Williams was inspired by Banksy.
‘I’m a fan of rebels’: Saul Williams. Photograph: Geordie Wood
‘I’m a fan of rebels’: Saul Williams. Photograph: Geordie Wood

Saul Williams: ‘The bullshit lyricists have the catchiest hooks ’

This article is more than 7 years old
The American rapper and actor on the state of hip-hop, mashing up Shakespeare with his music, and backing Sanders for US president

Your latest album, MartyrLoserKing, tells the story of a Burundian hacker who sparks a revolution via the internet. Where did the idea come from?
Around 2012 I was spending time in places like Senegal, South Africa and Reunion island, collecting sounds and stories. All sorts of things were going on around the world – the Occupy movement, global uprisings, whistle-blowing conflicts – and I wanted to write a modern-day parable. I thought making the protagonist a hacker was the smartest thing to do.

I was inspired by Banksy and the social commentary in his work, the way he questions authority. I started thinking how that would play out in the virtual realm: what would happen if a Banksy piece appeared on everybody’s Facebook page without us sharing it, in the same way U2’s album appeared on our iPhones without anyone asking for it. I’ve met Bono and spoken with him about his attempts to erase debt and all that – it is what it is – but I’m a huge fan of the rebel, those people who challenge authority.

Did you meet any Burundian hackers?
I met lots of tech-savvy kids in Africa. Everybody in Senegal was walking around with iPhones and Beats headphones imported from China. It’s not your pity-porn imagining of what’s going on in these countries. In Somalia, people are buying fruit at the market and paying for it with their phones. In Haiti I met someone in a remote village who was 3D printing prosthetic limbs for local people for the equivalent of $20.

What were you doing in all these places?
I was in Senegal to shoot the film Aujourd’hui. The French-Senegalese director Alain Gomis wrote the script for me though I’d never met him before – he got it green-lit by saying I was attached to it. The other countries, I was hitting for poetry and music tours.

How did you get started as a musician?
Everything I’m doing now, I got into as a kid. At eight I decided I wanted to be an actor. The same year I started writing raps. The only difference was that rapping was something I did in my spare time whereas acting I did in the theatre club at school. I started acting outside of school and then went on to study it at grad school. Hip-hop wasn’t something that happened in the classroom.

I was writing in my room but battling throughout my community, doing talent shows, sending demos to Def Jam when I was 14, performing at rallies, at my dad’s church. I was playing out but a lot of my work had to do with being isolated… I read so much Shakespeare in my spare time. My dad was a preacher and I had read the Bible, and that was cool, but then I encountered Shakespeare and thought, oh it’s the same kind of language but this is fun. I did my first Shakespeare play when I was eight, playing Mark Antony in Julius Caesar.

And that inspired you to read more?
Yeah. I had insomnia and I would stay up late every night and read. Also on car rides. We lived 60 miles from New York City [in Newburgh, Orange County] so everything required an hour in the car or bus. So I was always reading Shakespeare. I found it funny because there were so many sex references. It was the same thing we were looking for in hip-hop – I saw parallels immediately. I was trying to write rhymes in old English.

Watch a trailer for Tey (aka Aujourd’hui), featuring Saul Williams.

That must have been interesting for the rappers you were battling.
No, I never played those in public [laughs]. Usually I just pulled out the braggadocio but privately I imagined an album where I could do all that stuff. But that was the thing: the modern [hip-hop] game was never progressive enough for me. When I did my first album with Rick Rubin, I brought in a cello. I was listening to a lot of Björk, and I was like, “There have to be strings.” He said: “What the hell are you doing, dude? Are you crazy?” I was like, “No I’m just trying to hear something I haven’t heard before. Why are we choosing one loop and rapping over it? I want movement.”

Does anything in contemporary hip-hop interest you?
Definitely. There’s always been interesting stuff happening, but things go in cycles. There was a moment when the most progressive music was aligned with the most progressive ideologies – Public Enemy, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest. But then the music became boring and it was the bullshit lyricists who had the catchiest hooks. With most of the music I’ve been really into in the last decade, it’s like, yeah he’s a misogynist, yeah he’s full of shit, but boy do I like how he raps, boy do I like his choice of beats.

My favourite rapper right now, even though he’s not necessarily consistent, is Young Thug. Musically he’s mindblowing to me but sometimes, listening to his lyrics, I wish I didn’t speak English.

Kendrick Lamar, Earl Sweatshirt, Angel Haze – they all have interesting things to say and interesting music too. With Kendrick, the only thing I’m not excited about is his Christianity, but you can’t win ’em all.

Where do you live?
I was in Paris for four years but now I’m in Los Angeles. My wife is Rwandan and we have lots of family for whom English is not the first language, so it introduces me to other perspectives, other musical references. I realised early on how much I was missing out on if I was only listening to anglophone music.

You’re back in America just in time for a Trump presidency. Good timing.
No [laughs uncomfortably], I’m trying to work whatever magic I can for Bernie Sanders.

Are you encouraged by his popularity?
Yeah, but he needs more offline popularity. The communities we need to reach right now are not on Twitter and Facebook. It’s the same thing I felt during the Bush-Gore campaign. You thought nobody was going to vote for Bush but you didn’t realise you were just in your own circle.

Saul Williams tours the UK from 20 June to 3 July

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