Saul Williams - The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust
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Free Music Notes for The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust
Free Music Review: Pure poetry
Hit: 5 Stars
This is a superb album. If all hip hop was this good....
"Niggy Tardust" is not just hip hop but also combines elements of industrial rock and other genres in a very artistically pleasing way. Both the sound and the lyrics are inspiring. The subject matter may not be comfortable for some but we need to listen anyway. Saul Williams is political and that's the way he should be.
Free Music Review: Bloody Good
Hit: 5 Stars
I am bias because Saul Williams just happens to be my hero. But I love this album. Black History Month starts the album off on such a good note and it only gets better from there. You can take so much from this album. You don't like what he has to say (doubtful) you can groove to the amazing arrangements that him and Trent created. Or vice versa. Modern day dervish of words.Free Music Review: HYPE AND BLING FREE
Hit: 4 Stars
Saul Williams isn't your typical hip hop/rap superstar in that there's no flash car, big mtv cribs mansion no 22 women hovering in the background and an endless supply of bodyguards, or if there is hes not flash about it. Another thing that sets him apart is that his songs are not about how many notches he has on his bedpost or how many people he has shot or how many millions of albums he has sold and that hes the greatest hip hop star in the world (I'm looking at you Kanye West). No Saul Williams is for real and anybody who has listened to his previous albums or seen him live will confirm that.
Niggy Tardust came about as a result of supporting Nine Inch Nails on their With Teeth world tour in 2005. Trent Reznor personally picked Saul Williams to tour with him and despite the differences in style, Saul was well received by nin fans and gained new followers as a result. So when it came time to go into the studio to record the follow up to 2004s brilliant self titled album there was only one person he could call to help produce and write the album. Trent Reznor.
The results are great as you get an album full of big beats and daring samples. One of those is a reworking of U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday which contains a sample of the drumbeat from that song. Tr(n)igger contains a sample of Public Enemy's Welcome to the Terrordome and it works perfectly. Trent Reznor appears on 14 of the 15 tracks in some form or another whether it be programming, arranging or the music, he also provides vocals on 2 tracks, Break and WTF. The music from Skin of a Drum wouldn't have sound out of place on Nine inch nails album Ghosts i-iv. Saul's lyrics are brilliant as always. With this physical release you get 5 bonus tracks including 3 unreleased songs as well as List of Demands (reparation) and the remix he did of nine inch nails track Hyperpower which is called Gunshots by Computer.
The inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust wont sell ten million albums and wont get the recognition it deserves from the mainstream music world but I'm sure he wont mind. Do yourself a favour and forget the cartoon rap of 50 cent and get Niggy Tardust. You wont be disappointed
Free Music Review: A revelation
Hit: 4 Stars
(I'm French, please excuse the limitedness of my skills...)
I'd never heard of Saul Williams before this record. I wasn't really much into hip-hop, anyway. Well, on the other hand, I'm a NIN fan, so...
Thanks to the efforts of Mr. Reznor, I heard of the digital release of 'The Rise & Liberation of Niggy Tardust!'. I was quite thrilled at first at what could be seen as an Internet-scale experiment, with the 'pay and support an artist/don't pay but please spread the word' choice, etc.
So I was in.
And I didn't regret it. It even became of one those 'soundtrack of your life' albums you never stop listening to for months.
The NIN sound trademark is quite obvious throughout the album, especially with compositions such as 'WTF!' (where Trent Reznor makes a short guest appearance on vocals) and almost all of the five or six last tracks, replete with tortured sounds of strings, overdriven harmonies and bizarre beats. Despite this, the range of Reznor's talent and tastes allows much more than a NIN album with Saul Williams on vocals. Again, the sound production on this album shows the versatility of Reznor's work.
A blend of heavy hip-hop, old-school jazzy hip-hop, massive industrial beats, light, aerial melodies, grinding noises, and a more experimental aspect of fusion between poetry and rhythm; all of this sewn together by the poet himself, Saul Williams, equally at ease when rapping and singing his meaningful lyrics.
I cannot really compare this work to Saul Williams' previous ones, as I never listened to them... But I've got a more important criterion. This isn't an easy-to-listen album. You listen to it once, you put it aside for a week. Then you gradually come back to it, learning how to listen to it, realizing its qualities, enjoying while analyzing... That type of revelation doesn't happen all the time.
The alliance of the two musicians, the two universes, the two styles, produced a very interesting result, quite unique a mixture. It was a great discovery, to say the least.
Hat tip to the artists.
Free Music Review: Tracks to Check Out
Hit: 4 Stars
Album is great blend of the NIN sound/sampling (best part of NIN) with hip-hop lyrics and spin. It is easy to get thrown off by the obvious listens when sampling songs from this album (and those obvious songs are among the weakest on the album: Niggy Tardust- album title track/David Bowie reference for those old enough to have drown in David Bowie's sound and the Sunday Bloody Sunday cover).
The album is solid (at least 5-8 tracks that you'll want to listen to over and over again).
Top Tracks are (check these out to get a feel for this album!): Break, WTF, Skin of a Drum, Banged and Blown Through, Raised to be Lowered, the Ritual, TR(n)igger