Customer Reviews

The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop

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I had the pleasure of seeing Saul Williams perform poetry from The Dead Emcee Scrolls a few days ago. A problem that many spoken word artists encounter is that their poetry sounds great on stage and does not stand confidently alone on the page. Saul doesn't have this problem. His style is so pronounced that it encompasses many forms... you can hear his voice when you read the page, you can see his words when he speaks. The book is truly a treasure... you can dig, and dig, and dig... discovering new truths each time you pick the book up. He was asked by someone in the audience, how long did it take to write this book. His response was, ten years.

Saul also spoke about how academians must study hip hop in order to truly understand modern poetry, because emcees are creating new forms of meter.

This book is a testament to that.

Enjoy.

Saul Williams paints a picture in every poem he writes. Over that picture he paints another, and another, untill the original takes so long to uncover through the layers of symbolism. He brings emotions over a bridge to a new world and he does not just tell us to be individuals, he shows us how to see ourselves as independant, free thinking beings. He is an amazing poet and this new book is genius, as can be expected.

I first heard about this book on a message board (I think it was the one from DaveyD.com) and I really enjoyed reading the publisher's excerpt, and it was just the introduction. With it, I didn't know how to take it. Whether it was truth or just a very well worded story from Saul Williams. Either way, I could feel the vibe of Hiphop Kulture coming from it. So of course, I went out and bought it.

I was blown away.

I first heard of Saul from the book ", said the Shotgun to the Head." So I already thought I knew what to expect. But I was completly blown away by the deepness of these poems. Whether really taken from a strange manuscript in an old spray can or just a way to publish his own poems about Hiphop's preservation of love, peace, and unity, this was great. I recommend it for anyone who like poetry, spoken word, rap music, or just books. Very good.

The Dead Emcee Scrolls start out with a great new poem called NGH WHT. After that, a good deal of the material is from older poems that he has in some cases edited, while in others, left mainly the same. NGH WHT is filled with subtle nuances that are not always easy to pick up on, so multiple reads are likely merited.

While a bit repetitive for die-hard fans, the work gives a very strong representation of where his work comes from, but also has some great new material. As to where he will go from here, that is anyone's guess.

Hip-hop has long been viewed by many as a watered-down genre. Those people have not yet discovered Saul Williams. I had heard of Saul because of the movie Slam a while back. I was really getting into underground hip-hop at the time so I decided to give Saul's music a listen. What I found was a breath of fresh air and a style that was powerful and poetic. This book is an insight into the world of Saul's lyrics and inspiration. I am an aspiring emcee, not aspiring to be famous but aspiring to become a better lyricist. This book has helped me greatly in seeing how a great emcee is inspired. I cannot recommend this book enough to anyone who has a great love for hip-hop music or just hip-hop culture in general. It is a deeply personal and thought provoking book. It pays for itself in the first few pages. Don't skip out on this one.

Saul Williams, The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop (MTV, 2005)

I was really impressed by , said the shotgun to the head, the first Saul Williams book I read, and so I reached for this one as quick as I could get my library to loosen its taloned grip on it. Pity that, because The Dead Emcee Scrolls has all the things I didn't like about , said the shotgun to the head and none of the things I did like about it.

Oddly for a poetry book, the best parts of The Dead Emcee Scrolls are its prose. (Save the obligatory tip of the hat to 9/11, which seems omnipresent in today's American poetry books.) Williams starts us off with a thirty-page tale--how tall it is is left to the reader to decide--about how he came upon the Dead Emcee scrolls, which he asserts are not his work. In fact, he tells us, he found them rolled up in an empty spray-paint can while on jaunt through the abandoned subway tunnel of New York City with a friend. It's a great story, and becomes even better when he starts talking about his travails in deciphering the coded language found therein (anyone who's ever tried to puzzle out graffiti tags will be able to identify). Then, in the rest of the first half of the book, he presents us with what he came up with. I started doubting the veracity of the story early; there are a few cultural references that come from more recent events than Williams' supposed discovery. As well, Williams tells us, these are hip-hop lyrics (and unlike Williams, I do make a distinction between hip-hop lyrics and poems). True, that, at least mostly. There are a few times when the poems do veer off into the realm of actual poetry, or at least something approaching same, but for the most part they conform to Williams' analysis of hip-hop; these are, in his words, cries for power. The obvious logical leap there is that in these pieces, the message is more important than the medium; if you've read any random three poetry reviews I've written in the last twenty years, you know exactly what I have to say about that without my saying it, so I'll leave off flogging that particular dead horse for the nonce.

But the prose? Luminous. Williams is one hell of a storyteller, and he's also one hell of a media critic. The second part of the book consists of journal entries from the years he spent transcribing/translating/writing/etc. (1994-2001) as well as an essay about hip-hop occasioned by a chance meeting with Hype Williams in 2001. Saul sees himself and Hype at opposite ends of the hip-hop spectrum; Saul is interested (and invested) in the golden-age rappers like Run-DMC, KRS-One, and the like, while Hype, in Saul's eyes, personifies the new, greedy, violent age of hip-hop (he was, after all, the producer of the film Belly, and the mogul behind such new-school rappers as Jay-Z and DMX, both of whom Saul specifically name-checks here). "[Hype] asks me if I listen to hip-hop. I tell him that I study it, but that I cannot listen to it in most cases for the same reason I don't eat meat: I don't like how it feels in my system....He wants to know if I remember Public Enemy, KRS, Rakim...I tell him that I have difficulty listening to contemporary hip-hop because I can't forget." (168-169)

About that I can give a whole-hearted "Amen". With two exceptions (Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E. And Dirty Wormz, both notable for actually having a band to go along with the DJs), the hip-hop in my music collection over the years began with Run-DMC's King of Rock and ended with NWA's 100 Miles and Runnin'. Yeah, they were angry young men with a message, but it was a message that they knew how to get across; the whole more flies with honey thing, you know? Run's braggadocio was always humorous, Eazy-E was a storyteller as much as he was a rapper. ("8 Ball" is still my favorite NWA track.) And Williams (Saul, not Hype), when he's declaiming on the state of hip-hop in America at the dawn of the twenty-first century, is dead on. I could read a whole book of Saul Williams' music criticism, and I'd probably be thrilled with it. Here, though, there's not enough to balance out the verse material, which is banal. **

Saul Williams, hip-hop's so-called "poet laureate," can comfortably add "hip-hop mystic" to his résumé with this collection of excellent poetry. His rhymes drip with the religious symbolism of ancient Mystery cults (most notably, Isis) as he journeys with the reader on a path to self-discovery, spiritual fulfillment, and ethical reasoning. In hip-hop Williams sees ancient drums and chants, camp-fire storytellers whose power has been hijacked by capitalist greed, materialism, defeatism, and chauvinism. He teaches through twistable and irresistible verse that the power of history's lessons and thought can change worlds by changing words.

I admit that I am not a hip-hop fan, per say. I do enjoy a select few artists (Williams included), and have studied African American history/culture, so I was not entirely unfamiliar with the themes/issues of this book. I am, however, a lover of poetry, truth, and vulnerable strength, which Saul Williams encapsulates perfectly. Truly, one need not know much about hip-hop to appreciate this book. No matter one's musical preference or cultural background, Williams speaks truth, and therefore can be embraced by all. "Word is bond."

This is Saul Williams but it is not a book of poetry. It is well written and I would recomend it to anyone who likes Saul Williams, poetry, hip hop or both.

Challenging and quite odd book.

The preface is an odd one. Basically that he found words in a symbolic language in a spray can in the subway.

I think that is a myth honestly, the word's are Saul's.

This is where one of our great slam poets got started.

I also think slam poetry has taken many of the greatest aspects of the hip-hop. Storytelling, personal narrative and redemption included.

I probably wouldn't read this first for Saul Williams, but well worth reading.

Edmund (aka Ed2D2)

This book is incredible, truly inspiring the way that Saul shows his real love for the culture that made REAL hip hop.