Saul Williams is a renaissance man of epic proportions and eclectic tastes. You might know him from his acclaimed collaboration with Trent Reznor which gave birth to Saul's third album, 2007's The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust. He's also starred in Slam, a movie about a young black and gifted poet trying to find his way and rise above all the negativity to do really great things. He's worked with Rick Rubin, Serj Tankian, Allen Ginsberg, Zack De La Rocha and he even danced with Brooke Shields.
His performances have to be seen to be believed because Niggy Tardust is borderline force of nature. The energy and eloquence paint startling pictures with eardrum shattering loudness that takes you back to The Downward Spiral.
Now Saul is gearing up for the next level, he's almost done his highly anticipated fourth album and is putting together a brand new book of poetry. However, things haven't been all roses for Saul, his marriage has ended in divorce and now the wordsmith is both a rockstar and a single father currently residing in Paris. I was lucky enough to catch him on a beautiful Sunday in November and we proceeded to talk about life, music and the Grippo King.
Garrett Faber: How's the tour?
Saul Williams: The tour's going good man, it's always interesting doing a tour that kinda feels like the last leg of an album ya know? This my third time touring the US as Niggy Tardust and I'm almost done with my new album and new music and whathaveyou, it's an interesting time of having fun ending that mode, not saying goodbye to it, but it's always a weird thing to tour around this time, two years into an album.
GF: Whats the new stuff gonna be like?
SW: It's hard to describe, the easiest thing to say is that I haven't written anything from anger, so for anyone who knows me that's a huge step. It's distinguishedly different from all my other works. I dunno how else I would describe it, it's strong in the sense of the drum, and there's a lot of singing.
GF: Since you didn't find yourself writing from anger this time what emotions did you find yourself drawing upon?
SW: Well, I've been writing this album for two years now and I've been through such a range of emotion. I started writing this album as soon as I was done with Niggy Tardust which came out November 2007, at the time I was engaged, in February 2008 I was married, and then as of December 2008 I was no longer married, so imagine that range of emotion.
GF: I read that you grew up in New York, and then you moved to LA and now you live in Paris, what are those three cities like? How does Paris differ from New York?
SW: Paris is very much like New York, it differs greatly from LA, but in New York it only seems different in terms of language and culture, but New York has that sense of urgency and Paris, although it's a huge sprawling metropolis, it doesn't have that same sense of urgency because the French are very laid back and much more about family and friends and life, they're very much into life as opposed to career so most people are off work once work hours are done and eager to connect with their friends and family in bars and cafes and what have you. There's a culture difference because New York like much of America especally the major cities like New York and LA are pretty much running on pure ambition.
GF: Let's talk about Grippo and the industrial punk hop thing, when I listened to Niggy Tardust I was surprised by how epic it all sounded, musically it was really a landmark for me.
SW: It's definitely an epic album and the goal with that album was pretty much the same goal I've always had except I had Trent to back me up this time. My goal has always been to explore and explode the idea of genre as presented to me by society at large. In some ways I've been told what kind of music is expected of me and it has been my mission to supersede those expectations and say "Just because you think it's supposed to fall into that category doesn't mean that it can't have this, and this, and this, and this and this". And Trent was really helpful in helping me flesh out that vision, so Niggy Tardust is a really fun album for me, it was fun to record and really fun to perform. That was the main thing, Niggy Tardust was meant to be performed more than anything else. I recorded that album while I was on tour performing, I would come from the stage and go into the vocal booth, and I'd still have the energy that I would have on stage while recording that album.
GF: What was it like recording with Trent Reznor? What's he like in person?
SW: Trent is just like a regular cool dude ya know, maybe a little nerdy and what have you in his newfound and beautiful sobriety, he's an awesome cat to be around, extremely knowledgeable when it comes to music. He has his own particular tastes and likes and dislikes and what it was like to work with him was how it is when you just form a real synergetic union with anyone. It's like where we don't have to say too much because we were both really going for the same thing in the same way, loving the same thing and loving what each other brings to the table. He was always very supportive of all my ideas and I've always felt super supportive of his. We didn't have any conflict making the album because we were both really wanting the same thing.
GF: When can we expect your new album to come out?
SW: I don't exactly know, I mix it when I get back to Paris after this tour and then everything else is up in the air, I haven't decided how to release it or when or any of that I just want the album to be done and then I'll decide everything else.
GF: When people say "go and mix an album" what does that mean? What do you actually do?
SW: Basically mixing an album is kinda like what an editor does when they edit a film. You can imagine you when shoot a film you have hours and hours of footage, you have to have someone with a really great eye to say "we need this but this gets in the way, we need this to make it sharper," that's the same kind of thing that goes with mixing an album, you edit. Making sure all the sounds sound their best, making sure it sounds good in a jalopy or cheep car with no system or a stereo with an amazing system or in the club or making sure that it bangs. You can even had surround sound or effects on a voice or on a guitar, all of that stuff is done in a mix. When you record a demo it's raw with no effects. Finding out what's necessary, letting go of that isn't necessary. It is the most major part, I think, of recording an album.
GF: Wow, thank you for explaining.
SW: Some people don't realize how crucial it is, a lot of musicians don't spend a lot of time on the mix and they'll wonder why their stuff doesn't get played on the radio and what have you. It ensures the quality of the production.
GF: Nice, and then it's timeless after that.
SW: Exactly, Niggy Tardust was mixed by Alan Moulder, and Niggy Tardust would bang to a certain extent if it weren't mixed by him, but the fact that it was is what made it sound the way it does. When the guitars come out in "Sunday Bloody Sunday" all of a sudden in that final third of the song those huge guitars take over the song, it's the mix that does that.
GF: What was your childhood like?
SW: I grew up in a place called Newburb, New York, which is the suburbs of New York City and my father was a baptist minister, my Mom was a school teacher and I was really into theater, acting, breakdancing and rapping. I was a little artsy kid who went to an art school elementary school and then went to public school for junior high and high school. I was an exchange student when I was a junior in highschool for a year. I came back and went to college in Atlanta and went to grad school at NYU for acting. It was really the education days but it was New York in the '80's.
GF: Wow.
SW: It was in terms of Hip-Hop, in terms of music appreciation especially in regards to Hip-Hop I grew up in the middle of a movement. We really felt an ownership of that music like "this is ours! We created this!" Ya know? In those regards it was really fun, I grew up having to defend it from everyone, from my parents to kids in school in Metalica shirts who would be like "that's not even music dude, they're just talkin!"
GF: How do you feel about Hip-Hop now?
SW: I like a lot of stuff and there's stuff that I don't like. As someone who will always be a Hip-Hop head there's a lot of stuff that I'm into, from a Lil Wayne to a Drake to a Gucci Mane, there's tons of people that I listen to and enjoy. We were just in New Orleans yesterday and we were just listening to the radio in New Orleans and everything sounded good. In the mid-nineties I had the roughest time with Hip-Hop and thats when I started doing poetry which eventually led to me writing music again. That was when it was hard for me, I felt like it got really gangster in the mainstream and all of the fun cool shit was being lost or becoming underground. There's always gonna be whatever bad bands or bad groups or bad rappers that the public adores or has this great success and you're just like "What? Are you serious?" and there's always gonna be people who seem really deserving of it and there's always pop acts like the Black Eyed Peas or whatever. It is what it is.
GF: Do you have any advice to kids who'll read this interview and want to make music themselves?
SW: I'd say to listen to as many kinds of music as possible, one of the coolest and weirdest things for me was when I was an exchange student at the age of sixteen and I moved to Brazil and Hip-Hop hadn't arrived there yet and so I was forced to listen to what they were listening to in Brazil. They would make like full Brazilian covers of David Bowie songs and Brazilian covers of Pink Floyd songs and Tracy Chapman songs. There would be a lot of samba and bossa nova and like the older I get the more I realize that that music, especially the samba and bossa nova and paying attention to their drumming, it really affected my sense of musicality.
GF: Are you gonna make any new movies in the future?
SW: I do have movie ideas that I've been developing for some time. I'm looking forward to auditioning for stuff again as well, my interest in acting is starting to become piqued again, I lost interest over the years but I'm starting to regain it. I think I'll be doing some stuff shortly, definitely.
GF: What made you lose interest? Your music?
SW: Well, that was one of the things ya know? Music and poetry kinda hijacked and comandeered my life. Also, unless you're gonna do independent film you pretty much need to be in New York or LA. Being on tour made me not be around as much and roles that were offered to me were pretty status-quo, drug dealer, cop, doctor, and those things don't really excite me too much in real life. I didn't know why I would want to perpetuate them onscreen just for money, ya know? My whole purpose for getting into acting was to not get a 9 to 5. I couldn't understand why I would want to portray these like..
GF: Regular boring people?
SW: Well it's not that they're regular boring people it's just that I believe in the power of art, that's what Niggy Tardust is there for, thats what everything I've ever done is there for, it's to rip your perceptions to peices and make you contemplate your existence and life and the meaning of it, and the purpose of it and all those things. Maya Angelou has a quote "Anything an artist writes should be written with the urgency of what they would write if someone were holding a gun in their mouth."
The stuff I was being asked to do at the time just seemed like complacent, boring shit that wasn't going to affect anything except my bank account.....and maybe my popularity a bit but nothing really meaningful. I thought that if I were going to start doing that then in a way it would kinda betray what I set out to do with Slam and everything else I've done, so it hasn't been of interest to me. But I think TV and everything is getting a lot more interesting right now.
GF: What was the Cannes Film Festival like when you went?
SW: Oh man that really tripped me out, I remember my first day there I was doing a photoshoot for a bunch of photographers out by this pool and they kept asking me to back up. I backed into this man who turns out to be also doing a photoshoot and they also kept asking him to back up. It was Boy George.
GF: Damn!
SW: That was my first day at Cannes, bumping into Boy George. From there on out it was crazy, I remember the Slam party that we had that Ingrid and Goldie DJ'ing at the party, and Lennox Lewis coming and hanging out. Cannes was awesome, hanging out in really fancy hotels, I went to a party there that Bruce Willis was DJ'ing and he was only playing Parliament Funkadelic, dancing with Brooke Shields, the list goes on.
GF: You danced with Brooke Shields?1?
SW: *Laughs* Yes! It was crazy!
GF: I heard you met Allen Ginsberg and did a song with Serj Tankian, what were they like?
SW: Well, the Ginsberg meeting was crazy, it was three weeks before he died. He listened to me read songs, we did a poetry reading together at NYU, he listened to me read poems and pulled me aside afterwards and told me he really loved my poetry. He was talking to me about meditation and chanting om chakras and what it connects and all that stuff, so it was a really beautiful encounter with him. Serj has been a friend of mine for years, I think I met him through Rick Rubin and the song "Talk to Strangers" is Serj on piano, that came about from him calling me one day out of the blue and was just like "Saul I was thinking of you yesterday and I wrote you a song." He FedExed it to me and the music became "Talk To Strangers", and at the time I was mixing my second album, the self titled album. I wanted an introduction for that album, and when I heard that song it sounded like an introduction, so I just sat there and wrote to it. I feel like I've had some wonderful gifts from some nice people, like Serj, like Zach, like Trent, like Rick Rubin.
GF: One more question, whats your creative process like? How do you go from inspiration to poem, to full blown song? What stays and what goes?
SW: Usually it's a bit of a different process for each, when I'm writing a song usually it's the music that comes first, I remember making the song Tr(n)igger off of Niggy Tardust, it all started from me listening to my favorite Public Enemy song "Welcome to The Terrordome", playing with my drum machine, sampling it and making this loop that I could not stop listening to.
GF: That is a great loop!
SW: Oh my god! I still love it! I can't wait to perform that song every night just so I can hear it loud. It's amazing. Sorta like with "List of Demands", the lyrics didn't come first it just sorta came from me playing around with my drum machine, making that beat and wanting to write lyrics to match the intensity of the music. That's how most of my songs come about, most of them come about with me trying to find words to match the mood of the music but also correlates with whatever mood i'm in at the time. Poetry on the other hand is a much more personal, cathartic thing, that happens in my journal and it happens when and however it happens.
GF: How inspired have you been lately?
SW: Oh man I've been very inspired living in Paris, pretty much writing nonstop. I came to Paris with the new album half done and worked on the rest of it there. I've been in music mode but also editing mode working on this new book. The poems are new, I've written them over the past couple of years. So I've been editing, as well as adding new stuff to that material, so it's an interesting process, I have no idea dude. It's been a really weird year. As good as this year was, it's also been a dark year, dealing with divorce and all that shit. I moved to Paris because I needed to get the fuck away, so yeah the music and the poetry has been the most helpfull thing for me this year and staying focused and all that.
GF: Well it's good that you're not writing from anger at this point because the world needs love.
SW: Hell yeah man, I hear you.
His performances have to be seen to be believed because Niggy Tardust is borderline force of nature. The energy and eloquence paint startling pictures with eardrum shattering loudness that takes you back to The Downward Spiral.
Now Saul is gearing up for the next level, he's almost done his highly anticipated fourth album and is putting together a brand new book of poetry. However, things haven't been all roses for Saul, his marriage has ended in divorce and now the wordsmith is both a rockstar and a single father currently residing in Paris. I was lucky enough to catch him on a beautiful Sunday in November and we proceeded to talk about life, music and the Grippo King.
Garrett Faber: How's the tour?
Saul Williams: The tour's going good man, it's always interesting doing a tour that kinda feels like the last leg of an album ya know? This my third time touring the US as Niggy Tardust and I'm almost done with my new album and new music and whathaveyou, it's an interesting time of having fun ending that mode, not saying goodbye to it, but it's always a weird thing to tour around this time, two years into an album.
GF: Whats the new stuff gonna be like?
SW: It's hard to describe, the easiest thing to say is that I haven't written anything from anger, so for anyone who knows me that's a huge step. It's distinguishedly different from all my other works. I dunno how else I would describe it, it's strong in the sense of the drum, and there's a lot of singing.
GF: Since you didn't find yourself writing from anger this time what emotions did you find yourself drawing upon?
SW: Well, I've been writing this album for two years now and I've been through such a range of emotion. I started writing this album as soon as I was done with Niggy Tardust which came out November 2007, at the time I was engaged, in February 2008 I was married, and then as of December 2008 I was no longer married, so imagine that range of emotion.
GF: I read that you grew up in New York, and then you moved to LA and now you live in Paris, what are those three cities like? How does Paris differ from New York?
SW: Paris is very much like New York, it differs greatly from LA, but in New York it only seems different in terms of language and culture, but New York has that sense of urgency and Paris, although it's a huge sprawling metropolis, it doesn't have that same sense of urgency because the French are very laid back and much more about family and friends and life, they're very much into life as opposed to career so most people are off work once work hours are done and eager to connect with their friends and family in bars and cafes and what have you. There's a culture difference because New York like much of America especally the major cities like New York and LA are pretty much running on pure ambition.
GF: Let's talk about Grippo and the industrial punk hop thing, when I listened to Niggy Tardust I was surprised by how epic it all sounded, musically it was really a landmark for me.
SW: It's definitely an epic album and the goal with that album was pretty much the same goal I've always had except I had Trent to back me up this time. My goal has always been to explore and explode the idea of genre as presented to me by society at large. In some ways I've been told what kind of music is expected of me and it has been my mission to supersede those expectations and say "Just because you think it's supposed to fall into that category doesn't mean that it can't have this, and this, and this, and this and this". And Trent was really helpful in helping me flesh out that vision, so Niggy Tardust is a really fun album for me, it was fun to record and really fun to perform. That was the main thing, Niggy Tardust was meant to be performed more than anything else. I recorded that album while I was on tour performing, I would come from the stage and go into the vocal booth, and I'd still have the energy that I would have on stage while recording that album.
GF: What was it like recording with Trent Reznor? What's he like in person?
SW: Trent is just like a regular cool dude ya know, maybe a little nerdy and what have you in his newfound and beautiful sobriety, he's an awesome cat to be around, extremely knowledgeable when it comes to music. He has his own particular tastes and likes and dislikes and what it was like to work with him was how it is when you just form a real synergetic union with anyone. It's like where we don't have to say too much because we were both really going for the same thing in the same way, loving the same thing and loving what each other brings to the table. He was always very supportive of all my ideas and I've always felt super supportive of his. We didn't have any conflict making the album because we were both really wanting the same thing.
GF: When can we expect your new album to come out?
SW: I don't exactly know, I mix it when I get back to Paris after this tour and then everything else is up in the air, I haven't decided how to release it or when or any of that I just want the album to be done and then I'll decide everything else.
GF: When people say "go and mix an album" what does that mean? What do you actually do?
SW: Basically mixing an album is kinda like what an editor does when they edit a film. You can imagine you when shoot a film you have hours and hours of footage, you have to have someone with a really great eye to say "we need this but this gets in the way, we need this to make it sharper," that's the same kind of thing that goes with mixing an album, you edit. Making sure all the sounds sound their best, making sure it sounds good in a jalopy or cheep car with no system or a stereo with an amazing system or in the club or making sure that it bangs. You can even had surround sound or effects on a voice or on a guitar, all of that stuff is done in a mix. When you record a demo it's raw with no effects. Finding out what's necessary, letting go of that isn't necessary. It is the most major part, I think, of recording an album.
GF: Wow, thank you for explaining.
SW: Some people don't realize how crucial it is, a lot of musicians don't spend a lot of time on the mix and they'll wonder why their stuff doesn't get played on the radio and what have you. It ensures the quality of the production.
GF: Nice, and then it's timeless after that.
SW: Exactly, Niggy Tardust was mixed by Alan Moulder, and Niggy Tardust would bang to a certain extent if it weren't mixed by him, but the fact that it was is what made it sound the way it does. When the guitars come out in "Sunday Bloody Sunday" all of a sudden in that final third of the song those huge guitars take over the song, it's the mix that does that.
GF: What was your childhood like?
SW: I grew up in a place called Newburb, New York, which is the suburbs of New York City and my father was a baptist minister, my Mom was a school teacher and I was really into theater, acting, breakdancing and rapping. I was a little artsy kid who went to an art school elementary school and then went to public school for junior high and high school. I was an exchange student when I was a junior in highschool for a year. I came back and went to college in Atlanta and went to grad school at NYU for acting. It was really the education days but it was New York in the '80's.
GF: Wow.
SW: It was in terms of Hip-Hop, in terms of music appreciation especially in regards to Hip-Hop I grew up in the middle of a movement. We really felt an ownership of that music like "this is ours! We created this!" Ya know? In those regards it was really fun, I grew up having to defend it from everyone, from my parents to kids in school in Metalica shirts who would be like "that's not even music dude, they're just talkin!"
GF: How do you feel about Hip-Hop now?
SW: I like a lot of stuff and there's stuff that I don't like. As someone who will always be a Hip-Hop head there's a lot of stuff that I'm into, from a Lil Wayne to a Drake to a Gucci Mane, there's tons of people that I listen to and enjoy. We were just in New Orleans yesterday and we were just listening to the radio in New Orleans and everything sounded good. In the mid-nineties I had the roughest time with Hip-Hop and thats when I started doing poetry which eventually led to me writing music again. That was when it was hard for me, I felt like it got really gangster in the mainstream and all of the fun cool shit was being lost or becoming underground. There's always gonna be whatever bad bands or bad groups or bad rappers that the public adores or has this great success and you're just like "What? Are you serious?" and there's always gonna be people who seem really deserving of it and there's always pop acts like the Black Eyed Peas or whatever. It is what it is.
GF: Do you have any advice to kids who'll read this interview and want to make music themselves?
SW: I'd say to listen to as many kinds of music as possible, one of the coolest and weirdest things for me was when I was an exchange student at the age of sixteen and I moved to Brazil and Hip-Hop hadn't arrived there yet and so I was forced to listen to what they were listening to in Brazil. They would make like full Brazilian covers of David Bowie songs and Brazilian covers of Pink Floyd songs and Tracy Chapman songs. There would be a lot of samba and bossa nova and like the older I get the more I realize that that music, especially the samba and bossa nova and paying attention to their drumming, it really affected my sense of musicality.
GF: Are you gonna make any new movies in the future?
SW: I do have movie ideas that I've been developing for some time. I'm looking forward to auditioning for stuff again as well, my interest in acting is starting to become piqued again, I lost interest over the years but I'm starting to regain it. I think I'll be doing some stuff shortly, definitely.
GF: What made you lose interest? Your music?
SW: Well, that was one of the things ya know? Music and poetry kinda hijacked and comandeered my life. Also, unless you're gonna do independent film you pretty much need to be in New York or LA. Being on tour made me not be around as much and roles that were offered to me were pretty status-quo, drug dealer, cop, doctor, and those things don't really excite me too much in real life. I didn't know why I would want to perpetuate them onscreen just for money, ya know? My whole purpose for getting into acting was to not get a 9 to 5. I couldn't understand why I would want to portray these like..
GF: Regular boring people?
SW: Well it's not that they're regular boring people it's just that I believe in the power of art, that's what Niggy Tardust is there for, thats what everything I've ever done is there for, it's to rip your perceptions to peices and make you contemplate your existence and life and the meaning of it, and the purpose of it and all those things. Maya Angelou has a quote "Anything an artist writes should be written with the urgency of what they would write if someone were holding a gun in their mouth."
The stuff I was being asked to do at the time just seemed like complacent, boring shit that wasn't going to affect anything except my bank account.....and maybe my popularity a bit but nothing really meaningful. I thought that if I were going to start doing that then in a way it would kinda betray what I set out to do with Slam and everything else I've done, so it hasn't been of interest to me. But I think TV and everything is getting a lot more interesting right now.
GF: What was the Cannes Film Festival like when you went?
SW: Oh man that really tripped me out, I remember my first day there I was doing a photoshoot for a bunch of photographers out by this pool and they kept asking me to back up. I backed into this man who turns out to be also doing a photoshoot and they also kept asking him to back up. It was Boy George.
GF: Damn!
SW: That was my first day at Cannes, bumping into Boy George. From there on out it was crazy, I remember the Slam party that we had that Ingrid and Goldie DJ'ing at the party, and Lennox Lewis coming and hanging out. Cannes was awesome, hanging out in really fancy hotels, I went to a party there that Bruce Willis was DJ'ing and he was only playing Parliament Funkadelic, dancing with Brooke Shields, the list goes on.
GF: You danced with Brooke Shields?1?
SW: *Laughs* Yes! It was crazy!
GF: I heard you met Allen Ginsberg and did a song with Serj Tankian, what were they like?
SW: Well, the Ginsberg meeting was crazy, it was three weeks before he died. He listened to me read songs, we did a poetry reading together at NYU, he listened to me read poems and pulled me aside afterwards and told me he really loved my poetry. He was talking to me about meditation and chanting om chakras and what it connects and all that stuff, so it was a really beautiful encounter with him. Serj has been a friend of mine for years, I think I met him through Rick Rubin and the song "Talk to Strangers" is Serj on piano, that came about from him calling me one day out of the blue and was just like "Saul I was thinking of you yesterday and I wrote you a song." He FedExed it to me and the music became "Talk To Strangers", and at the time I was mixing my second album, the self titled album. I wanted an introduction for that album, and when I heard that song it sounded like an introduction, so I just sat there and wrote to it. I feel like I've had some wonderful gifts from some nice people, like Serj, like Zach, like Trent, like Rick Rubin.
GF: One more question, whats your creative process like? How do you go from inspiration to poem, to full blown song? What stays and what goes?
SW: Usually it's a bit of a different process for each, when I'm writing a song usually it's the music that comes first, I remember making the song Tr(n)igger off of Niggy Tardust, it all started from me listening to my favorite Public Enemy song "Welcome to The Terrordome", playing with my drum machine, sampling it and making this loop that I could not stop listening to.
GF: That is a great loop!
SW: Oh my god! I still love it! I can't wait to perform that song every night just so I can hear it loud. It's amazing. Sorta like with "List of Demands", the lyrics didn't come first it just sorta came from me playing around with my drum machine, making that beat and wanting to write lyrics to match the intensity of the music. That's how most of my songs come about, most of them come about with me trying to find words to match the mood of the music but also correlates with whatever mood i'm in at the time. Poetry on the other hand is a much more personal, cathartic thing, that happens in my journal and it happens when and however it happens.
GF: How inspired have you been lately?
SW: Oh man I've been very inspired living in Paris, pretty much writing nonstop. I came to Paris with the new album half done and worked on the rest of it there. I've been in music mode but also editing mode working on this new book. The poems are new, I've written them over the past couple of years. So I've been editing, as well as adding new stuff to that material, so it's an interesting process, I have no idea dude. It's been a really weird year. As good as this year was, it's also been a dark year, dealing with divorce and all that shit. I moved to Paris because I needed to get the fuck away, so yeah the music and the poetry has been the most helpfull thing for me this year and staying focused and all that.
GF: Well it's good that you're not writing from anger at this point because the world needs love.
SW: Hell yeah man, I hear you.
VIEW 10 of 10 COMMENTS
interesting hearing him compare NY with Paris.