GOLLIWOG
What makes the darkness of billy woods’ raps bearable is that you’re always a step or two away from a good joke or decent meal—a real-world, life-goes-on resilience that has been the bedrock of hip-hop from the beginning. That said, *GOLLIWOG* is probably the most out-and-out unsettling album he’s made yet, a smear of synth rumbles, creaky pianos, and horror-movie strings whose dissonances amplify scenes of otherwise ordinary dread, whether it’s the Black artist trying to charm the boardroom of white executives on “Cold Sweat” or prolonged eviction scene of “BLK XMAS.” Now in his mid-forties, woods is confident enough in his critique to make you squirm in it and has a rolodex of some of the best producers in underground rap to back him up, including Kenny Segal, El-P, Conductor Williams, and DJ Haram. Spoiler alert: The real monsters are human.
The Brooklyn rapper’s new solo album is a twisty horrorcore masterpiece where history and nightmares are indistinguishable. The spooky backdrop is a perfect showcase for his craft.
Golliwog's real-world allusions to the cannon of Black horror prove Billy Woods to be one of rap’s best ever storytellers.
Working with an array of collaborators with impressive cohesivity, on his latest album, billy woods reflects on race and class through surrealist, horror-inspired soundscapes.
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That cover art gets even more horrifying the more you let it seep into your consciousness. To offer one interpretation of the eerie cover of billy woods’
Billy Woods’s ‘Golliwog’ is an intensely confrontational album and makes no effort to hold your hand.
GOLLIWOG by Billy Woods album review by Ben Lock for Northern Transmissions. The artist's new LP is now out via backwoodz studioz
The New York rapper confronts trauma and state-sanctioned terror with his latest release, pulling out innumerable images of inhumanity