kind of late, but saul williams offers his explanation:
"I received a lot of questions from some about why I would allow my song 'List of Demands' to be used in a Nike campaign. Ironically, half of the people now reading this post never heard of me until that commercial aired. That, indeed, was one of my reasons for allowing it. A small circle of poets and conscious do-gooders are not enough to effect the change necessary to shift our planet in peril. We must enlist people from all walks of life, people not accustomed to questioning the norm, people who may simply want to dance uninterrupted without message or slogan. I see no glory in 'preaching to the converted'. Furthermore, I believe fully in the power of music and have branded my work with it's own conscientious stamp and stomp of attitude fueled to steal the show in the face of the nonsensical. Quite simply, it was clear to me that people would not be rushing to the store to buy Nikes after seeing that commercial, but rather rushing to youtube or itunes to hear or download the song. I even imagined those who would be rushing to blogs to question how I could allow this to happen and the subsequent discussion of the ethical treatment of factory workers and how new minds would be informed and enlisted in the struggle for ethical change." -- Saul Williams
let me point out saul's been doing this for over a decade now and it must be frustrating for someone on the front lines to make so little effort.
Do I care about this money? I do. Will I keep this money? Very little of it. Within the year I will have given away almost a million dollars to about 100 charities and individuals, benefiting everything from hospice care to an artist who makes sculptures from Burger King bags. And the rest will be going into publishing books through McSweeney's. Would I have been able to publish McSweeney's if I had not worked at Esquire? Probably not. Where is the $6000 from Forbes going? To a guy named Joe Polevy, who wants to write a book about the effects of radiator noise on children in New England. --Dave Eggers.
george clooney has made money from an industry that is there to eliminate sad reality and escape to violent, ad-heavy fantasy and his contributions to darfur shouldn't be dismissed because of it. tracy mcgrady and lebron james have visited darfur and work for companies like nike. i'm not justifying nike purchasing and i'm definitely not gonna diss your opinion but the world isn't black and white and good and evil. if it were it would be a whole lot easier to dismiss anyone for doing a number of things that make the world better, regardless of their resources.
kind of late, but saul williams offers his explanation:
"I received a lot of questions from some about why I would allow my song 'List of Demands' to be used in a Nike campaign. Ironically, half of the people now reading this post never heard of me until that commercial aired. That, indeed, was one of my reasons for allowing it. A small circle of poets and conscious do-gooders are not enough to effect the change necessary to shift our planet in peril. We must enlist people from all walks of life, people not accustomed to questioning the norm, people who may simply want to dance uninterrupted without message or slogan. I see no glory in 'preaching to the converted'. Furthermore, I believe fully in the power of music and have branded my work with it's own conscientious stamp and stomp of attitude fueled to steal the show in the face of the nonsensical. Quite simply, it was clear to me that people would not be rushing to the store to buy Nikes after seeing that commercial, but rather rushing to youtube or itunes to hear or download the song. I even imagined those who would be rushing to blogs to question how I could allow this to happen and the subsequent discussion of the ethical treatment of factory workers and how new minds would be informed and enlisted in the struggle for ethical change." -- Saul Williams
let me point out saul's been doing this for over a decade now and it must be frustrating for someone on the front lines to make so little effort.
Do I care about this money? I do. Will I keep this money? Very little of it. Within the year I will have given away almost a million dollars to about 100 charities and individuals, benefiting everything from hospice care to an artist who makes sculptures from Burger King bags. And the rest will be going into publishing books through McSweeney's. Would I have been able to publish McSweeney's if I had not worked at Esquire? Probably not. Where is the $6000 from Forbes going? To a guy named Joe Polevy, who wants to write a book about the effects of radiator noise on children in New England. --Dave Eggers.
george clooney has made money from an industry that is there to eliminate sad reality and escape to violent, ad-heavy fantasy and his contributions to darfur shouldn't be dismissed because of it. tracy mcgrady and lebron james have visited darfur and work for companies like nike. i'm not justifying nike purchasing and i'm definitely not gonna diss your opinion but the world isn't black and white and good and evil. if it were it would be a whole lot easier to dismiss anyone for doing a number of things that make the world better, regardless of their resources.