Have any one picked this book by saul williams ."The dead emcee scrolls:The lsot teachings of hip hop" saul william is one the top poets but not just a poet his an emcee aswell.
http://www.saulwilliams.com/watch this video_List of Demands
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1llNYAlYrc&search=saul%20williamsQuote from Saul Williams
I believe that we all must serve as the newest embodiment of the christ (which means the embodiment of love, right?), in our own particular ways. all that means is that we stop insisting that our idea of the greatest good is foreign and outside of us, while we commit the unthinkable under the excuse of "I'm only human". This is pretty much the message of the first poem, NGH WHT, where I'm saying in a pretty uncoded language, YOU are the christ if you choose to be it.
I remember going to a church in LA called Agape one Easter sunday when the minister preached, "When Christ comes back, he comes back as many". Ofcourse our idea of the christ is so warped that it's very difficult to understand (which may be why I personally enjoyed The Da Vinci Code. Not particularly for it's accuracy, but just in that it inpsired many to question the possiblity of Yeshua having sex and being married, which then raises more questions like, was he a "good fu@K"? Did he eat Pu$$#? Did preaching make him horny?. It humanzed him, thus making us potentially more God-like in our self-perception). Anyway, I had no real fear of anyone labeling me as a hip hop christ, just because I don't even know what the hell that is. And whatever it is, I think Nas has that on lock with all of his self as christ references. I just wanted to say something that kinda felt like the elephant in the room. Soemthing that I felt had to be said, which is this: hip hop has and can serve to empower. Everything that i've learned about hip hop, I've learned directly from it, thus the book doesn't carry the subtitle of being the lost/secret teachings of Saul Williams, but rather, the lost/secret teachings of hip hop.
The idea behind The Confession as the intro was simple. I wanted the experience of reading this book to be exciting. I wanted to encourage people to begin the process of stretching their imaginations and possibly abandoning their belief systems simply for the sake of entertaining broader possibilities. We have to find mystical ways of looking at the world before us. Everything in life is there to be deciphered and decoded. No exceptions.
My use of NGH is there for several reasons. One, as an observer of our society and culture I've observed that it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Intellects want to stop using it. Meanwhile cats on the street a**ert that those intellects must not be "Real NGHs" I wrote this book for cats in the streets and prisons (intellects get enough books written for them. they can go purchase dj spooky's Rhythm Science). Sometimes these cats come to readings, stand in the back, give me a pound as I exit and whisper in my ear "I love you, man. You my NGH". Tears in their eyes and everything. These are my brightest moments. Like many a rapper out there, Kemet you can attest, we grew up surrounded by "gangsters", young black men caught in the trap of poverty, violence, drugs, etc.many of these cats relate to the word NGH. Why? 'Cause that's exactly what they feel like. Why? because like an ipod, that word can carry 400 yrs/gigabytes of experience in it's tiny frame. Why? Maybe because that word didn't start with slavery and opporession. as I said in an earlier thread, the Niger river had that name before Europeans came to Africa. There are several indigenous African languages where there are words very close to the word "STRONG BLACK PERSON" that have an array of meaning, some of them sacred. Perhaps the word hasn't disappeared for reasons beyond our brief knowledge of it's history. It may be the only word in the American English Lexicon of actual African origin (this is a mere hypothesis). Anyway, in regards to writing "for the streets", my personal experience does not put me in a position to talk down to anyone. Their lingo is my lingo. I plead Special Ed "I'm outspoken. My language is broken into a slang, but it's just the dialect that I select when I hang." And it's true. I use the word NGH in specific company. Welcome to the gang. My thought was to see what would happen if we lifted the word up rather than always trying to push it down (and under the rug). So I approached it as if it were the name of God. In the first poem (and the 6 poems that follow), NGH WHT is the name of God, like YHWH is the name of god in ancient Judaic texts.
If you don't like reading the word aloud then read it to yourself. The truth ain't always PC and comfortable. In Black America's quest for freedom we must be free to a**ociate and/or disa**ociate with the terms of our oppression. NGH is one of those terms. Do as you will. I do not aim to encourage it's usage, nor do I wish to deny it. I guess in the case of the paragraph above, that would make me agnostic..haha. I expect that this discussion will go on for years. I am open to the possibility of coming to a conclusion where I decide not to use the word. I am also open to the possibility of it being overused to the point of us simply growing tired of it. That was also taken into positive consideration when I decided to "lift it up".
I never heard of the "crystal skulls"
I've recorded an entire album from NGH WHT. I'm not sure what I will do with it. How much of it, I will release etc. You're right, in that it would trip a lot of "fans" out. But most fans have no real idea of who I am as a person. In some ways, I feel that NGH WHT is the most self revealing poem I've ever shared. I know for a fact that you cannot write in that manner unless you truly have it in you. The streets are in me in ways that even I have yet to fully admit. Sharing this poem was the beginning of that process.
http://www.saulwilliams.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3 ;t=000464
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