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This isn't the first time spoken-word artist and musician Saul Williams collaborated with artists that don't seem to fit with his expected mold. On his last album, the self-titled Saul Williams, he worked with Zack de la Rocha and Serj Tankian on different songs. Now he has paired up with Trent Reznor to produce his third release, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! Reznor's influence is undeniable with heavy, NIN style loops and beats are heard throughout the album.

With The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! Trent Reznor and Saul Williams wanted to release the album differently than they have done in the past. Reznor has been very outspoken with his distaste for the music industry and record labels recently. Taking a cue from Radiohead's In Rainbows release, they decided to release NiggyTardust! digitally without a record label. Seeing some of the frustration brought out by the limitations of In Rainbows MP3s, Reznor and Williams released NiggyTardust! in several bitrates and formats (192kb, 320kb and even in FLAC format). Free for the 192kb version, or $5 for any of the versions. Where they also outshined the Radiohead release was in the extras packed in the zip file: a beautifully illustrated PDF with song lyrics and a large cover art image.

Noisy glitches open up “Black History Month” and fall into the background as Saul Williams takes the mic and rhymes his warning “The banana peels are carefully placed, so keep your shell-toes carefully laced.” The next track, “Convict Colony,” is a straightforward rock song, with very little hip-hop influence and is probably the most accessible track on the album. “Tr(n)igger” is a great track with Public Enemy samples and old school beats throughout.

Other highpoints on the album include the dub inspired “Scared Money” which breaks into a creepy middle part full of babies crying and hands clapping before abruptly entering back into the earlier dub sound. The closer “The Ritual” is an industrial song that Saul raps over. The beats and sounds eventually convert into an ambient drone that abruptly stops leaving Saul's voice as the last thing you hear.

The uninspired cover of U2’s classic “Sunday Bloody Sunday” could have used some more excitement. It is a fairly straightforward reinterpretation of the original using some standard NIN sounds. When I had seen this on the tracklisting I was hoping for so much more. While Saul sings throughout the song, near the end he breaks into a spoken word interpretation, “And it’s true, we are immune/When fact is fiction and TV reality,” and shows us how interesting this cover could have been.

Overall, NiggyTardust! has some strong moments, but Saul’s presence gets overshadowed at times by the production. The album features too much Trent Reznor and not enough Saul Williams. There are some tracks that have a stereotypical NIN sound and even Saul's vocals seem to be too influenced by Reznor, where Saul is nearly indistinguishable from Reznor. NiggyTardust! lacks the punch of Saul Williams' earlier output, but is still a pretty solid release with a great distribution model, and is definitely worth checking out at either price point.

Reviewed by: Tom Gilbert

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