Music Is My Weapon

Poet-preacher-actor-rapper-singer-musician "hyphen-artist extraordinare" Saul Williams was born in Newburgh, N.Y. in 1972. The son of a preacher father and school-teacher mother, he learned to love both the spoken and written word as a child. "I was always making up rhymes," he says. "But I never thought that poetry would become my life."

After graduating from Morehouse College with a B.A. in philosophy, Williams moved to New York City to take a Master's Degree at New York University in Acting and found himself at the epicenter of the New York cafe poetry scene. "It was a great moment in my life," he recalls "It felt like a calling." In 1995 he began mesmerizing audiences with landmark performances at the Brooklyn Moon Cafe's fabled "Open Mic" sessions and in 1996 he became the Nuyorican Poet Cafe's Grand Slam Champion.

His fame on the spoken-word circuit led to the lead role in the 1998 feature film, SLAM. The film won both the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Camera D'Or and introduced Williams and his own spoken-word poetry to international audiences. It also garnered him the I.F.P. Gotham Film Project's "Perry Ellis Award" for Breakout Performance. Williams plays a young man who discovers the power of poetry in prison. "It's about leaming that you're not a victim, regardless of how many times you are told you're a victim," he says. Other films have included the documentaries Underground Voices and SlamNation and the PBS television documentary, I'll Make Me a World.

As a musician, Williams has performed with such artists as renowned hip-hop artists The Fugees, Erykah Badu, KRS-1, De La Soul, DJ Krust, as well as legendary poets Allen Ginsberg and Sonia Sanchez. He will be recording and co-producing his debut album with America/Columbia Records with premier producer Rick Rubin (Beastie Boys, Red Hot Chili Peppers). Danny DeVito's record company Jersey Records/Warner Chappell has signed the emerging star to a music publishing deal.

As a writer, Williams has been published in The New York Times, Details, Esquire, Bomb Magazine and African Voices. His first book of poetry, The Seventh Octave was published by Moore Black Press in 1997. He has traveled around the world, performing his work to audiences throughout the United States, Great Britain, Turkey, France, Brazil, Scotland, Germany and the Czech Republic. He has also performed his work at poetry festivals such as the National Black Arts Festival in Atlanta and the Beat Poet Exhibit at the Whitney Museum in New York.

Saul Williams and SHE illustrator Marcia Jones began their relationship in 1995 as artists on the Brooklyn performance art and spoken word circuit. Their daughter Saturn was bom in 1996. Both Williams and Jones currently make their home in Los Angeles, California.