“These are unique times to be living though,” declared a winded Saul Williams (aka Niggy Tardust) to a packed house at New York’s Blender Theater. Decked out in his signature silver face paint, with long blue feathers staked throughout his hair, Williams thrashed around the stage rhyming and wailing into his microphone as a mosh pit gathered below. The crowd was eclectic and the mood electric. Artists swirled paintbrushes across a mural on the floor as Williams sang songs from his Trent Reznor-produced album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, eliciting punk rock riffs passionate enough to rival the artists’ own famed slam poetry. Between songs, the crowd was treated to these poems; they roared back in unison when Williams proclaimed that “music is our alchemy.”
Flavorpill spoke with Williams as he relaxed with his daughter Saturn between stops on his national Afro-Punk tour.
