The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust

The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust! is the third album by Saul Williams, released on November 1, 2007. Williams worked closely with Trent Reznor on the album. The title of the album is a reference to David Bowie’s 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. Many of the album’s lyrics were adapted from poetry in Williams’ 2006 book The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop.

The album was available for purchase or free download at NiggyTardust.com. The website allowed users to pay $5 to support the artist and be given the choice of downloading a 192kbit/s MP3 version, 320kbit/s MP3 version or lossless FLAC version. Digital distribution of the album is provided by Musicane. Reznor publicised the album on the Nine Inch Nails website and mailing list, saying that “Saul’s not the household name (yet!) that Radiohead is” and urging fans to support him. This was a reference to Radiohead’s In Rainbows, which was released in October on the band’s own website with customers choosing how much they want to pay for the album. The free option has since been removed, with the website claiming they intended to remove it after 100,000 free downloads of the album all along.

Those who download the album directly from the site for free receive all 15 tracks, a jpeg of the album’s cover, and the album booklet/lyric sheets in PDF. Additionally, the lyrics for each track are embedded using ID3 tags, allowing for their viewing in supported media players.