Actor/poet/hip-hop artist Saul Williams [ tickets ] melds his poetry skills with rock flavors throughout his latest album--a self-titled set--with a little help from former Rage Against the Machine vocalist Zack de la Rocha and System of a Down's Serj Tankian.

This month, he hones his acting chops in HBO's "Lackawanna Blues," produced by Halle Berry, and starring S. Epatha Merkerson, Jimmy Smits, Mos Def and Macy Gray. Acting isn't anything new to Williams. He has appeared in the UPN sitcom "Girlfriends" and the Kevin Spacey picture "K-Pax."

Although acting, poetry and music are his biggest loves, he desires to bring together the masses by "desegregating the airwaves."

"I'm trying to end segregation here," he said. "It's pretty crazy when you think about what happens on rock radio--rock radio that always plays Eminem. Eminem is rhyming. Why don't they play other hip-hop artists on rock radio? Why just Eminem?

"It's because rock radio a lot of times thinks of itself more so as white radio. We have to end that. If we don't end that, it will end us. A lot of us were surprised with the elections and what have you, a lot of people are still stuck in thinking in a particular way. We have to do our part. The role of art is really to inspire, to think broader or on more expansive terms."

Williams talkrf to liveDaily about his forthcoming appearance at the South by Southwest music festival in Austin, TX; his album and working with Tankian and de la Rocha.

liveDaily.com: You're playing the South by Southwest Festival in March. What are you hoping to get out of it?

Saul Williams: More fans and more fun. That's the whole purpose of the South by Southwest thing. The music industry is so, like, categorized. There are people who know of me as a spoken word artist. There are people who know me from the underground hip-hop world. There are people who know me from the rock-world tour with Mars Volta and stuff like that. All of those people are kind of surprised that they can like whatever realm they categorize my music in. It's just about winning over more people

So it's more about the fans than it is the industry folks who show up?

For me, yes. For sure.

Tell me about your songwriting process. You said most of your creative moments come early in the morning or late at night. Do you just write when the feeling strikes you or do you sit down and try to write a song?

Primarily I write when the feeling strikes me. Once a song has been started, then I can start adding to it whenever. This past album was written primarily music first. I wrote the music first and then I attached the lyrics to it, which for me was a big deal because my background in poetry is so heavily connected to the words themselves. I kind of wanted the words to play second fiddle to the music this time around

Why was that?

I wanted to write a better album. I wanted the music to have its own legs, so I focused on the music first. I wanted to focus on song structure. My first album was very much about me connecting existing poems with really hard beats. This time, I really wanted to focus on the structure of each song so that it fit into existing formats of what is good song structure, what will work on the radio and all that.

What was it like to work with Serj Tankian and Zack de la Rocha

Those guys are really good friends of mine. The cool part about working with either one of them was the fact that there was no stress because they weren't like hired help. I didn't pay them--not like I would have the money to pay them to work with me. They were friends of mine, just hanging out in both cases. The Serj thing was really interesting. That was something he did on his own accord. He called me one day and said, "Saul, I wrote a song for you." He composed that on piano and gave me the CD. He was like, "Do whatever you want with it." It was really beautiful. I know Serj through (producer) Rick Rubin. He had just written a song for me to recite on.

Zack and I have the same manager. We live down the street from each other. We see each other a bit more frequently, hang out and talk politics. We just really have been wanting to do something for a couple years now. This is the first thing we've done, and I'm sure we'll actually do more.

Your album really runs the gamut of beat poetry, alternative rock, and straight ahead hip-hop. Does that accurately reflect the variety of your influences and the music you'd like to tap into?

Yeah, definitely. I find that, musically, I'm all over the place. It's completely a reflection of the stuff I'm listening to--The Kinks, Lee Stratch Perry, The Game, Cam'ron, Jadakiss. I'm really into expression and the power and the beauty of it.

How long have you been writing poetry?

I've been writing poetry for a couple years. I really started out as an MC. When I was younger, like a teenager--at the same time I started working at a theater--my goal was to be an actor. The same time I started rhyming was the same time I started studying Shakespeare. The two kind of bled into each other, so a lot of my writing was reflective of a lot of the stuff that I learned through theater.

What do you prefer: theater and acting , or writing?

I prefer to perform. If I'm writing something, in a sense I'm performing on the page. If I'm performing music or reciting poetry, I'm performing on the stage. If I'm acting, I'm acting in front of the camera.