Saul Williams is the next hero in the destruction of the Music Industry as we know it. A US hip hop artist with a pretty kick ass sound. He’s distributing his album using a similar method to Radiohead, however you can only either pay $5 or nothing, which is rather cool. The other advantage they have available is the faster that there’s 3 versions to choose from. 192KBps MP3, 320Kbps MP3, or Lossless FLAC for the audiophiles. I bought the album to support the cause, after I listened to a few of his tracks I found on youtube that is. The album is pretty cool, it’s produced by Trent Reznor of NIN and you can hear some of that coming though, not enough to annoy you though. Definitely worth the buy I reckon. The text on the More Info page of the Niggy Tardust website is great, I love it:

My Dearest Friends and Fans,

It is my greatest honor to present to you The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!,
my new album produced by Trent Reznor and mixed by Alan Moulder. The wall of sound that we’ve created is tagged with such graffiti that a passerby would seek out doors and ways to ENTER. Once inside a world defined by dreams come true they’d find aligned with the simplest act of sharing what we treasure. Most people aren’t aware of the world of art and commerce where exploitation strips each artist down to nigger. Each label, like apartheid, multiplies us by our divide and whips us ’til we conform to lesser figures. What falls between the cracks is a pile of records stacked to the heights of talents hidden from the sun. Yet the energy they put into popularizing smut makes a star of a shiny polished gun. The ballot or the bullet for Mohawk or the mullet is a choice between new times and dying days. And the only way to choose is to jump ship from old truths and trust dolphins as we swim through changing ways. The ways of middlemen proves to be just a passing trend. We need no priests to talk to God. No phone to call her. And when you click the link below, i think it fair that you should know that your purchase will make middlemen much poorer…

NiggyTardust!

love,

Saul