Saul Williams

Saul Stacey Williams was born on February 29, 1972 in Newburgh, New York, the youngest of three children. He attended Newburgh Free Academy where he first drafted the song “Black Stacey,” and later earned a BA in acting and philosophy from Morehouse College before completing an MFA in acting at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. While in New York he became a fixture of the café poetry scene, winning the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam Championship in 1996 and appearing in the documentary SlamNation that captured the energy of the 1996 National Poetry Slam. His breakthrough into film came with the lead role in Slam (1998), a critically acclaimed indie that garnered both the Sundance Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Camera d’Or. From there, Williams expanded into music, collaborating with icons such as Nas, The Fugees, Erykah Badu, KRS‑One, and Zack de la Rocha, and releasing his debut album Amethyst Rock Star in 2001 with producer Rick Rubin. He followed this with a self‑titled record in 2004, a partnership with Nine Inch Nails on their Year Zero album, and a bold independent release engineered by Trent Reznor titled The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! in 2007. His subsequent albums, including Volcanic Sunlight (2011) and MartyrLoserKing (2016), continued to fuse experimental hip‑hop, industrial textures, and spoken‑word poetry, earning him a reputation as a genre‑defying visionary.