Saul Williams Stays on Message During Supercharged Set

"We on stage know that race is a social construct and we can go beyond it. So you can you!" No, those words didn't come from the mouth of Barack Obama but of Saul Williams, whose side stage performance attracted a path-blocking throng of onlookers. And Williams thrilled with a mix of industrial gristle, glam-rock theatrics, bristling hip-hop and poetic free-styling that was as hybrid-fused as his philosophies. Here was revolutionary music absent nostalgic shackles. Genre-bending songs such as "Niggy Tardust," "WTF!" and "Black Stacey" were simultaneously angry and provocative, while Williams and his mates' homemade costumes ensured that humor played just as much of a part in the festivities as fury.

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Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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