Reviews
The Dead Emcee Scrolls by Saul Williams
February 23, 2006
“The Dead Emcee Scrolls was written,” Niggy Tardust, aka Saul Williams, says, “with the intent of being the best hip hop album never recorded.”
Another poet exhibiting such bravado could be easily dismissed, but with his fourth poetry collection, Williams shows and proves, sticking to the classic hip hop proverb, there ain’t no future in yo’ frontin.’
It’s obvious that it’s the future that he’s concerned about by the way he manipulates time like a dope sample. Take for instance the book’s concept: In 1994, Williams discovered an ancient scroll hidden in an abandoned subway line, and once he deciphered the scroll’s message, it played a significant role in informing his poetry.
Looking at it symbolically, Williams is proposing that hip hop is a force embedded in us with power that reaches back in time and possibilities that reach deep into the future. But such a power doesn’t come without responsibility, and this is the call he presents to hip hoppers. “The power of the word surpasses all,” he says. “Ready to Die? Dead. Word is bond. The question is what is hip hop’s relationship to itself? How can an emcee not realize the power of word after being forced to serve a sentence?”
After laying down the intro, he launches into “NGH WHT,” a masterpiece of thirty-three chapters that does just as Williams intends. “The reader” he says, “should be able to feel the beats off the page.” Think gritty. Think Premier. Nonstop head nodding to poetry.
Excerpt:
Dissonant chords find necks like nooses. That NGH kicked the chair from under my feet. Harlem Shaking from a rope, but still on beat. Damn that loop is tight! NGH found a way to sample the way, the truth, the light. Can’t wait to play myself at the party tonight. NGHs are gonna die!
Cop car swerves to the side of the road. Hip-hop takes its last breath. The copy scrawls vernacular manslaughter onto his yellow pad, then balls the paper into his hands, deciding he’d rather freestyle.
You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to remain silent. And maybe you should have before your bullshit manifested.
Williams’s wordplay is more than clever. It’s probing and provocative; causing you to pause, reverse, and ponder. Laced with historical, political, religious and intellectual references, he’s a lyrical pastor marrying the streets and academia, the abstract and the concrete, the discordant and harmonious, the humorous and the sad, the sarcastic and the literal. He rhymes with reason and not for it, as he explains to me, “Words are vehicles. Without the meaning they carry as passengers, they don't mean shit. I'm not crazy about words. I'm crazy about change and making a difference.”
The remaining of the collection including the poetic tracks “Amethyst Rocks” and “Untimely Mediations” decelerate in tempo but not necessarily in impact. The second part of the book is an extensive outro, journal excerpts from 1994-2001. Naturally personal, the entries are seeped in musings of manhood and humanity, from a hip hop standpoint.
In creating and assembling this collection, Williams admits that the book shifted his perspective and heightened his observations. There’s no doubt that Dead Emcee Scrolls will do the same for anyone who has ever had any intimate relationship with hip hop. You’ll be surprised at what the culture can teach us. And from the proclaimed hip hop laureate, Williams defines his modest position, “My contribution to hip hop is really no different than the help I gave my partners in school who were too busy hustling in the streets to finish their assignments, for a little bit of change I did their homework.”
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