Billy Woods Rose Out of the Brooklyn Rap Underground as a virtuoso poet, one of hip-hop's monitor indirent and brilliant minds over the Past Two Decades. He Came Into His Own With Abstract 2010S Gems Like History Will Absolve Me and and Hiding Places. He Also Teamed up with Elucid for the duo Armand Hammer, on acclaimed albums like Shrines and and We buy diabetic test strips. His Indie Label Backwoodz Studioz Releases Everything from Rap to Avant-Jazz. But on Golliwoghe goes for an album full of horror stories. It's a Densely Poetic, Totally Masterful Tour de Force Where Woods Lets His Expansive Imagination Run Loose in A Dystopia where the Real-Life Monsters Are Scarier Thanthing He Coulding Invent. Welcome to his nightmares.
Woods Blew Minds With His Last Album, His 2023 Maps With Producer Kenny Segal – A Travelogue About a Rapper's World Tour, But Also A Concept Album About a Black Artist Running Around The Globe in Search of Any Place He Can Feel at Home. As he put it, Maps Was “A Black Rubik's Cube,” with Obsexive Lyrics About Hiding Inside Codes, where you have to spear in Cryptic Riddles – “Cover My Tracks with Backronyms” – Because you Never Know Who's Listening or How They're Scheming To Trap Youu. In one of the album's mons moufully funny moments, the fbi agent listening on the wiretap give up trying to decipher him, complaining, “i think it's all just rhymes.”
Maps was an invitation as well as a challenge-Woods Built a Collection of Globe-Spinning Puzzles and Dared You To Keep Up With Him, While Making it an adventure you couuldn'T Imagine Wanting to pass up. But Golliwog is more of a comparivion, with a bleaker vision. As on MapsThe Songs Are Full of People Forced to Live in misunderstanding, in The Name of Survival. AS Heys in “Corinthians,” “You don't want to know what it cost to Live/What it Costs to Hide Behind Eyelids.”
The 18 Tracks Feature in Murderers' Row of Underground Producers, Including Many He's World With With In The PaD-Segal, The Alchemist, Messiah Musik, Preservation-As Well As El-P, Sadhugold, Ant from Atmosphere, Steel Tipped where, and conductor Williams. He Also Gets Guest Shots From His Longtime Collaborator and Backwoodz Teammate Elucid, Along With New Orleans Rapper Cavalier, Definitive Jux Alum Despot, Detroit's Bruiser Wolf, Massachusetts' al.divino, and Singer-Sngwriter Yolanda Watson. The Music Goes for Horror-Movie Ambie, Building The Dystopian Mood With Eerie Samples of Human Screams, Sobs, Phone Alams, Howling Sax, Even An Old-School Dial-Up Modem.
Woods Gets His Title and Cover Art From A Type of Rag Doll, A Racist Caricatures Once Common in British and American Culture. “When I was 9 years old I Wrote A Story About An Evil Golliwog,” he Said When he yearned the album. “My mother read it and told me it was overly derivative and needed some work. Here we are.”
Woods spins a Wide Range of Horror Tales, with His Dazzlingly Complex Wordplay, But they're Mostly Rooted in Everyday Struggle, Racism, and Conflict. “BLK XMAS,” With Bruiser Wolf, is the Grytty Story of a Family That Gets Evicted, The Week Before Christmas. The Neighbors Watch the Children Cry, but then they like Out and Help Themselves to the Belongings The Family Had to Leave Behind on the Sidewalk, Scavening for Christmas Presents to Give Their Own Children. Woods Rhymes About Finding Toys in the Pile (“Dolls with they heads Missing/Wild-Eyed Rocking Horse, Mouth Carved Into a FRWN”), Creepy Gifts For Kids Growing Up in A Real-World Nightmare, passe-on one Hungry Child To Another, AS The Cycle Continues.
He Takes Inspiration from the Macabre Works of Stephen King, As Well as authors from Ralph Ellison to Franz Fanon to Fyodor Dostoyevsky. As he recently told rolling stone, “I Think a Lot of Horror Is Social Commentary [on] What People are scared of. ” There's Sex Vampires, Zombies, and Voodoo Dolls, Alongside Landlords, Cops, and State Violence. In “Born Alone” he details How Death Feels So Close, He Makes Sure to Wear Clean Socks Every Day, Over a Haunting Piano Loop.
“TODAY I WATCHED A MAN Die in Hole From The Comfort of My Home,” Heys in “All These Worlds are yours,” A disorienting track with dj haram and experience jazz artist Shabaka Hutchings. “I'm caught, History is to snare,” he decolas in “jumpscasca.” “Struggling, rope ever more taut/on my deathbed chuckling about all that time i bought/afrofuturist acura legend on thebrerblocks.” One of the Most Emotionally Intense Moments is “Lead Paint Test,” Where He, Elucid, and Cavalier Trade Their Grim Childhood Memories, Over Mournful Piano and Trumpet. Cavalier Sums it up when heys, “Every black life a thriller.”
Woods Saves The Toughest Track For Last – “Distance” Makes a Powerhouse Final, with Its Chant, “I Won't Be Located.” Elucid and Woods Descirbe the Art of Learning How To Sompesar Completely, with an off-Kilter Jazz Track From The La Trio Human Error Club. Woods Sees a Vision of Himself Travped by Police Violece on the Street (“Face Pressed to the Pavement/Knee in My Spine/The Crowd Unduate”) and Escapes to Where He Can't Be Found, “In The Forest, Face Painted, Fingertips Black With Charcoal.” He spins image after image of life in Hiding: “I Played Facing the Bassist/Miles Davis/I Slept in the basement/False Pride Jotted on the Paper/I Can't Be Located.” Golliwog Is a Horrorshow That Demands – and Replays – Close attention. But it's an album that offers no comfort – For Woods, The Monsters Are Everywhere, and Survival Means Keeping on Your Toes, Never More A Step Ahead of Them.
