Eighteen years ago, Saul Williams introduced himself to the world by chanting, "I don’t rhyme on track." He’s largely kept that promise. Though bred in New York’s '90s spoken-word scene, and prone early on to shouting his verse in a declamatory speech rendered like cipher freestyle, he quickly transitioned into a career that resists easy categorization. His underrated 2001 debut, Amethyst Rock Star, summoned the ghosts of the Black Rock Coalition and Living Colour; his incendiary 2007 collaboration with Trent Reznor, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, spun from Public Enemy-inspired industrial hip-hop to a cover of U2’s "Sunday Bloody Sunday."
Still, Williams remains a poet at heart. He wraps his recordings in metaphorical language and allusions to themes both subtle and pronounced. He’s a good songwriter—his Nike-approved 2004 single "List of Demands (Reparations)" proves that—who sometimes gets lost in the clutter of his ideas. That was the problem with 2011’s Volcanic Sunlight, a thrilling yet enervating work that patched together a post-disco ditty ("Dance") with a Janelle Monáe cameo, a feminist sing-along called "Girls on Saturn," and uneven hip-hop-inflected pop-rock like "Rocket."
Volcanic Sunlight was primarily produced and mixed by the French producer Renaud Létang, who is known for his work with Manu Chao and Feist, and the new MartyrLoserKing also finds Williams working with one producer, former She Wants Revenge frontman Justin Warfield, for a meditation on social justice and protest in the Internet Age. But this time, the results are more harmonious. Williams continues to hop across genres as usual, but the album’s tonal qualities remain consistent. "Horn of the Clock-Bike" consists of two piano bars looped into a motif. "Ashes" filters his voice like an AM radio transmission while the beat quickens into a bass-y techno thump. On "The Noise Came From Here," Warfield underlines a Rwandan Twa melody, "Bigirimana," with synthesizer accompaniment, and Williams portrays the undiminished spirit of his neighborhood despite the "police, sirens, guns." "All Coltrane Solos at Once" evokes Justin Warfield’s '90s trip-hop tracks like his Bomb the Bass number "Bug Powder Dust."
MartyrLoserKing doesn’t necessarily rise or fall on Williams’ ability to clarify his thoughts into a clear, memorable hook. When he simply repeats, "Fuck you, understand me" on "All Coltrane Solos at Once," he doesn’t need to say anything else. But it’s noticeable when he drifts amidst the industrial-tinged alt-rock of "Think Like They Book Say," and he has nothing but an enthusiastic shout of the title to anchor him. Throughout the album, he offers some wonderful turns of phrase, like when he sings on "Burundi," "Nike swoosh on bare feet/ Whitney Houston’s crack pipe/ The greatest love of all/ Watch me rise to watch me fall." He evokes an image of poverty-stricken neighborhoods before settling on a somewhat tired metaphor of "hacking" into and disrupting societal disparities as Warpaint vocalist Emily Kokal accompanies him.
MartyrLoserKing may be a call to 21st-century activism, but it also seems anachronistic. Williams’ vision of the Internet as a kind of new frontier resembles a scene from The Matrix, and Warfield’s serrated industrialism is pure '90s. We now know that technology enables our capitalist lusts, and our desire to have every ethnic and gender variation reflected in our culture is often reduced to a mere call for better customer service. Despite his occasionally dazzling wordplay, Williams doesn’t offer a solution for how we can evolve beyond our own inherent narcissism. He’s too optimistic for that.
