Chicago Tribune/Sound Opinions’ Greg Kot catches up with Saul Williams, and talks about the Nike ad, being pigeon-holed by Rick Rubin, and the inspiration of his new album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust:

“Where David Bowie used that album to make the media focus on identity regarding gender and sex, I was dealing with racial identity,” he says. “Race is a social construct. We willingly stand under the banners of black and white as if that were real, and allow society to polarize us, and polarize our music as a filter that we listen to it through. It’s like Run DMC standing in front of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with no guitars and singing, ‘I’m the king of rock, there is none higher.’ It’s about that hip hop audacity, that confidence to say, ‘What of it? Yeah, that’s right, make something of it.'”

I, on the other hand, am the King of Boggle. There is none higher. I got eleven points off the word quagmire.

MP3: Saul Williams – “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (U2 cover, courtesy of AOL)