Leap Life

Saul Williams’s new album Leap Life arrives less like a conventional studio record and more like an invocation assembled in real time — a gathering of spirits, histories, frequencies and unfinished revolutions arranged through voice, rhythm and intuition.

For nearly three decades, Williams has occupied a singular place in Black music and literature, bending the voice and using poetry to confront societal ills and commune with the ancestors. Since the late ’90s, he’s resisted the confines of genre with almost militant consistency: part punk philosopher, part griot, part futurist, part street-corner prophet. Whether through the industrial urgency of Amethyst Rock Star, the blistering Trent Reznor-produced The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust, or the spiritual meditations threaded throughout his collection of written work and films, Williams has long approached art as a transformative device.

But Leap Life feels different. It expands the definition of what music can be.