Saul Williams Reclaims MLK Day w/ Essay + "All Coltrane Solos At Once" feat. Haleek Maul

Saul Williams teams with Haleek Maul on the new song "All Coltrane Solos At Once" - an exploration of the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. from Williams' forthcoming Martyr Loser King LP. The essay and track combine to form a massive and thoroughly nuanced commentary on the act of rebellion - the oft-neutered root of King's work and legacy - according to the punk, funk and fire of black performance art.

No country for revisionist rhetoric, the essay is an electrifying indictment of the establishment that deconstructs the Disney-ized "Land of the free bullshit they serve us with the hotdogs" imagery at the heart of American idealism and replaces it with the cold, hard truths of the injustices that have been suffered by people of color in the United States in a matter of movements.

Connecting the dots, Williams brings his examination of the issue full circle with a discussion of how those past issues have contributed to the unbalanced and tenuous relationship between people of color and the U.S. Criminal Justice System. All of this is set against the cognitive dissonance, crude solos and visceral, hollering gut churn of free jazz. Check the track below to stream "All Coltrane Solos At Once." Scroll down to check out the text of the closing poem from Williams' essay. Read the full piece via FADER. Stay tuned for more from Saul Williams.

Unanimous Goldmine

All Coltrane solos at once.

Twist them horns

'round the necks

of each equation

& expand

upon multiples

of death.

We were crowded

into the shitbins

of a floating toilet

dreaming of an Afterlife.

Memory stored in a cloud.

Terra-bytes

in sea-major.

The winners

of religious thinking

praise books

for bookends.

Here, is the invention

of the astronaut.

First Nation

Sweat ceremony

in a spaceship.

To imagine hell

is privilege.

Paint a dreamworld

solid enough

to hold us.

Held by

blocks of time,

margins & calendars,

divisions of labor

contracts: social & otherwise.

With each kiss

bio-dynamic

in direct co-relation

to stars & seasons,

the ability to

calculate distance,

harness power,

stem cells,

erect mobile mansions

capable of projecting destruction

at greater & greater will,

what could be keeping us here?

Here is what death is like:

Life without fear.