Actor/performer Saul Williams has been named as the lead in the Broadway musical Holler If Ya Hear Me, the stage play based on the music of Tupac Shakur. The play is scheduled to begin preview performances on May 29, and it will open on June 19 at the Palace Theatre in New York City.
Let's just clear up some confusion that we've already seen floating around the internet: Williams is not, we repeat, not portraying Shakur in the musical. The plot of the play takes in the Midwest, where two friends (one of whom, presumably, is Williams) struggle to escape from the grips of poverty. It's a plot line not unlike Shakur's own, and will feature the late rapper's hits, including "California Love," "Keep Ya Head Up," and "Me Against The World."
Williams is an ideal choice for the lead in a musical that inevitably will need to incorporate rap. The actor has also gained renown for his performances of hip-hop, spoken word poetry, and often a hybrid of the two forms. Hip-hop has yet to gain much of a foothold on Broadway despite its mainstream strength in the music industry. The closest thing an official Broadway number has had to hip-hop was 1978's Runaways, a production from Elizabeth Swados. We don't have to explain that rapping is far different from the typical melodic approach of a Broadway musical, and writers have shied away from hip-hop because of it.
The success (or failure) of Holler If You Hear Me may serve as the indicator for whether the genre makes more appearances on what is awkwardly titled "The Great White Way."
