Saul Williams has announced his first solo album in seven years, Leap Life, arriving August 28 via Big Dada. Alongside the announcement, Williams has shared the project’s lead single, “Conspiracy,” featuring Gonjasufi and Moor Mother, accompanied by an official music video directed by Cleon Arrey.

 Named after Williams’ leap year birthday, Leap Life is presented as more than a traditional studio album. The project brings together ideas of ancestry, resistance, memory and spirituality through spoken word, improvisation and expansive musical arrangements. Throughout the record, Williams uses his voice as a central instrument, blending elements of jazz, hip-hop, West African rhythmic traditions, ambient music and experimental sound.

The album features contributions from a wide range of collaborators, including Carlos Niño, Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack, Kamasi Washington, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Surya Botofasina. Niño, who has maintained a friendship with Williams since the late 1990s, helped shape the album’s arrangements and musical direction, while Del Naja contributed to the sound of three tracks: “I Think I Get It Now,” “Controlled Is Not Controllable,” and “Not Everything For Sale.”

Thematically, Leap Life explores the relationship between the living and ancestral memory, with Williams describing the album as a space where grief, struggle and healing can coexist. Inspired by questions surrounding collective loss and liberation movements around the world, the record seeks to transform music into an act of connection. With “Conspiracy” introducing this new chapter, Leap Life marks another ambitious and boundary-pushing work from an artist who has spent decades expanding the possibilities of music, poetry and film.

Leap Life Tracklist

01 Baobab Constellation

02 Mazahua

03 I Think I Get It Now

04 Great, Great Grandmother

05 The Dagger

06 Controlled Is Not Controllable

07 13 Moons

08 Une Photographie

09 Not Everything For Sale

10 Robot Slave

11 Conspiracy

12 Vengeful Spirit

13 Friends I Ain’t Met Yet

14 Coming Forth

Photo credit: Marissa Rose Ficara