I always come back to this book every couple of years. It’s got some of my favourite lines of poetry and power in the text.

Sometimes I wonder what Saul thinks about this work in the years that have passed, how it would be worked and reworked with the knowledge gained now and with the movement of hip-hop as it traverses time.

Some of my favourite lines of poetry ever written is:

n  “If not then you must be trying to hear us
and in such cases we cannot be heard. We
remain in the darkness, unseen. In the center
of unpeeled bananas, we exist. Uncolored by
perception. Clothed to the naked eye. Five
senses cannot sense the fact of our existence.
And that’s the only fact. In fact, there are no
facts.
Fax me a fact and I’ll telegram a hologram
or telephone the son of man and tell him he
is done. Leave a message on his answering
machine telling him there are none. God and
I are one. Times moon. Times star. Times sun.
The factor is me. You remember me.”n

Saul is a one of a kind. A unique mind.

Isn't this just a retread of the first couple books? This collection led me to believe he knows he's out of good creative material.

Anyone who enjoys poetry or hip hop should own this book (period)

I should probably have spent more time reading this. I would've given it a higher rating. Make me appreciate hip-hop more.

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. **

Had no problems reading the prose in this book but since English is not my first language, reading the poetry part and getting it was kind of hard at times. Mainly because of the use of slang words. The effort, though, was totally worth it and i found the book profound and inspiring. It gets to the essence of hip hop (and life) in its purest form and is just another proof of Saul Williams' genius. I always appreciate the touch with an artist like him, no matter what media he uses - literature, music or movies.

Recommendation: For maximum pleasure it should be read out loud so one can fully feel the rhythm and the beauty of written word.

I love Saul Williams. He is brilliant.

Okay, You’re probably wondering what's a white girl from Vermont doing reading this? Oh, and she’s also… French Canadian. (shudder)

I know, I was too. I mean, I really have nothing in common with Saul Williams, I grew up in suburban NH where the ‘hood’ was a mile long strip mall and it was considered dangerous to hit TJ Maxx on a Friday night.

This being said, I was mesmerized. Granted, I had to have whole parts translated to me, but it was beautiful. I want to be a Saul Williams groupie. I want to follow him around and bask in his teachings.

Fireplace is in the heart Water places the art
‘round the islands of desiring where most primitives
stalk, sacrificing their daughters. These primordial
waters carry a feminine agenda that no man ever
taught us.


Or.


False idols, false Gods. Revering false titles.
Peep dude with platinum cross. He floss
bibles. Check vitals. Revivals. Father, son in
denial. Throw mama from the train and derail
every child.


Do I pretend to know what he’s seeing? No. I just go along with the ride and sigh.



It’s best seen though, I found this over the weekend. Enjoy.

I can't help but think that Mr. Williams may have put more effort into the titular pun and its inherent concepts than the actual poetry therein. Much of it reads like scribbled journal entries; unedited, half-baked, and chock full of overwrought metaphors and vague symbolism. But when he scores he scores, particularly in the poems that read smoothly and rhythmically as 16-bar rap verse, and his rambling prose in re: the nature of hip-hop and What-It-All-Means is pretty interesting and insightful, if a little self-important, and I guess that makes up for the marginal quality of some of his poetry.

I mean.. Saul Williams is a genius!

The introduction is unique and clever. I did a double take when I read the words "future slave narrative". the book is peppered with jems like that,

Summary-
As the Author Saul Williams enters the abandoned subway graffiti station. He is introduced by the art on the wall called graffiti. As he is exploring he finds a not so empty graffiti can filled with brown crumpled scrolls of poetry that’s cryptic. Saul begins to decode them and it takes many years to decode them, but he is finally done and now he shares the knowledge inside them with us readers. These pieces represent the real art of hip hop and the changes it has made throughout time, and now Saul Williams brings us along on our journey through rap culture.

Overview-
In my honest opinion this book really opened my mind to music. It’s like it opened up my third eye and now I see music and especially hip hop totally different and now I appreciate it more. I definitely recommend this book to hip hop fiends.

Cons-
The cons of this book is insane, but it depends on how you view this book, pros and cons can get difficult based on different views. As I was reading I couldn’t find too many Cons in the book, I mean it uses “harsh” language but I don’t mind it, in fact I like because he’s being real to us. Probably the only Con is that some of the poems are so powerful that I’ve had to reread them a lot and try to wrap my head around them, but that increased my brain power. In my point of view there wasn’t any cons about the book. There might be for other readers of this book.

Offensive Content-
This is just like Cons, it’s all based on opinion, but if I was to generally talk about it, yes there is a lot of offensive content. He uses the ‘b’ word but spells it BCH. Or he talks about real life event like sexual abuse and abuse in general. He also uses the ‘n’ word but also spells it NGH. I love that he does that, it shows that he cares about the strength of the words so he uses them, but he doesn’t spell them out correctly but you’ll still know what it means. There’s also gun violence and gangs involved, but it’s all realistic and connected to hip hop.

Pros-
The Pros of this book is very high for me. It’s almost like the short story A&P, it’s based on very realistic events and he’s informing us the reality of hip hop and poetry. He doesn’t hold back on his poems either. The way he produces the power in the poems is out of this world, I’ve noticed myself bobbing my head back and forth rhyming and singing to the book. His influence on rap has greatly increased after he released the scrolls of dead emcees. I love hip hop so this book is straight up Pros. He explains gangs and violence and racism all in his poetry about hip hop. It’s all so realistic, I’m tired of all the fantasy things about life, we all need reality.

Two Excerpts-

“I am the streets. The white lines only separate me from me. You hydroplane in false gods name and still crash into me. Sign and tree, mountainside, guardrail into the sea. They thought they stole you from my arms then carried you to me” pg.14

“Your existence is that of a schizophrenic vulture who thinks he has enough life in him to prey on the dead, not knowing that the dead ain’t dead and that he ain’t got enough spirituality to know how to pray. Yeah, there’s no repentance. You’re bound to love an infinite, consecutive, executive life sentence” pg. 57