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
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