Billy Woods - Golliwog (Album dropping May 9th)
- Thread starter Figaro
- Start date
KingsOfKings
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Have been casually listening to this today along with the new Armand Hammer album and it is PEAK.
9.5/10 album.
9.5/10 album.
Review
Track 1: Jumpscare prod. Steel Tipped Dove
Itās just over 30 seconds before we hear woodsā voice. At first we just get droning, clicks and whirs like a busted money counter, the buzzing of dying honeybees, a wide shot of a car gliding alongside a mountain highway. Then that jangling melody, a lullaby gone wrong, and woodsā appearing 'round the Overlook great room column: "Ragdoll playing dead/Rabid dog in the yard, car won't start, it's bees in your head." Hard to sum up this album much better than that.
Over the next two and a half minutes, woods lays out the thesis for GW, evoking everything from 1892 political cartoons to all the ways colonialism has poisoned the world (metaphorically and literally (donāt you eat that fish)) to that Afrofuturist Acura Legend time-traveling backwards. Itās a tour de force of lyricism, technical but not showy, direct without ever feeling abrasive. woods knows we canāt do shyt about any of this, not in this economy. He probably canāt do shyt either. Not a reason not to try, though. And I guess, when you reach the end of the road, all you can do is laugh and hope the soundtrack at your funeral sounds half as fitting as this.
Track 2: STAR87 prod. Conductor Williams
Cows flying, animated kitchen utensils, shytās hard to believe. Gotta be an explanation, but in this day and age, why bother waiting around to find out? This is woods at his pettiest, his most arrogant, the most DOOM-esque track on an album where he borrows entire hooks from the masked villain himself. He spares a moment to thank those that paved the way, but really, what are all these words going to do when itās hungry ghosts around the coffee table? You made a buck, you betrayed a friend, and youāre going to complain about the looks you get when you come home? Yeah, maybe the call really is going from inside the houseā¦
You won, though, no denying that. Too bad $1.2 million aināt stopping that bullet.
Track 3: Misery prod. Kenny Segal
This was the first single, the first taste, the first time we got to really sink our teeth into *Golliwog*. Over a Kenny Segal beat as jazzy as anything on Maps, woods spins a tale of a doomed love triangle into a 2-minute treatise on celebrity and vampirism. And this isnāt 1922; we get to see all the gnarliest bits, breasts heaving, blood and spit mixing beneath the rising sun.
This is a tour de force of allusions, Stephen Kingās eponymous novel giving way to DOOMās gas drawls giving way to Toni Morrison and her doomed Sethe. woods knows heās obsessed, but he also knows he canāt help but let it consume him. Some love is just too thick. "Misery," much like its namesake novel, is brutal as an axe swinging at an ankle, and just as swift. But what a way to tease an album.
Track 4: BLK XMAS (ft. Bruiser Wolf) prod. Sadhugold
He just canāt help himself. Huge placement with billy woods, a track named after a legendary 1974 slasher flick, a Sadhugold beat best described as lurching? And heās still going to get a Frank Gore bar off. Bruiser Wolfās just that special. This is the first feature on the album, and, as with a few other features here, woods uses it as a tone setter, less fleshing out a concept and more setting a vibe. And what a vibe this is. Wolf takes us through the hood, every angle of it, from the "grandmas in pajamas" to the armed robberies and eviction notices. Nothing is sugar-coated, nothing is softened, and while Wolf and woods both see the humor in even the darkest situations, nothing here is ever really funny.
When woods does finally rap, he spins out a tale of a family kicked out right before the holidays, every detail razor sharp, a Wes Anderson frame in verse form (if Wes had grown up idolizing John Carpenter instead of Roman Polanski, maybe). As usual for this album, woods blends in allusions to the works of King and Bradbury ("tent cities on the edge of town") with his own twisted visions, all off-kilter rocking horses and ultrasounds full of doom. Itās as bleak a story as heās ever told, and all the more crushing for coming after Bruiser Wolfās nasal-as-shyt panorama.
Track 5: Waterproof Mascara prod. Preservation
Preservation, man. On an album with the guy produced "Meet the Grahams" (a truly demented beat that seems to have been produced by trapping the souls of Drakeās ancestors in a grand piano), this is my pick for scariest instrumental here, hands down. Weāve got what seems to be a woman sobbing, woodwinds fluttering, a few sparse drums beats to keep things moving. Itās empty like a gallows after a hanging, just the body spinning in the wind. Itās the right backdrop though, for what becomes the most intensely personal song on the project, split over three short verses.
Verse one opens on a bad miracle, flipping "Houthi" lyrics into something even more paranoid. Death lurks around even corner, and once you invite him in, no amount of polite hints is going to get him out. Verse two finds woods studying Slyvia Plath and dead slavemasters. We close the song on lucky number three, full of more Hiding Places callbacks, another story about a kid left somewhere kids were never supposed to be. In under three minutes, we get a portrait of how the woods we see today was shaped by his childhood, how his fatherās ghost haunts every crevice of his life, how sometimes all you can do is hit it again off automatic.
Track 1: Jumpscare prod. Steel Tipped Dove
Itās just over 30 seconds before we hear woodsā voice. At first we just get droning, clicks and whirs like a busted money counter, the buzzing of dying honeybees, a wide shot of a car gliding alongside a mountain highway. Then that jangling melody, a lullaby gone wrong, and woodsā appearing 'round the Overlook great room column: "Ragdoll playing dead/Rabid dog in the yard, car won't start, it's bees in your head." Hard to sum up this album much better than that.
Over the next two and a half minutes, woods lays out the thesis for GW, evoking everything from 1892 political cartoons to all the ways colonialism has poisoned the world (metaphorically and literally (donāt you eat that fish)) to that Afrofuturist Acura Legend time-traveling backwards. Itās a tour de force of lyricism, technical but not showy, direct without ever feeling abrasive. woods knows we canāt do shyt about any of this, not in this economy. He probably canāt do shyt either. Not a reason not to try, though. And I guess, when you reach the end of the road, all you can do is laugh and hope the soundtrack at your funeral sounds half as fitting as this.
Track 2: STAR87 prod. Conductor Williams
Cows flying, animated kitchen utensils, shytās hard to believe. Gotta be an explanation, but in this day and age, why bother waiting around to find out? This is woods at his pettiest, his most arrogant, the most DOOM-esque track on an album where he borrows entire hooks from the masked villain himself. He spares a moment to thank those that paved the way, but really, what are all these words going to do when itās hungry ghosts around the coffee table? You made a buck, you betrayed a friend, and youāre going to complain about the looks you get when you come home? Yeah, maybe the call really is going from inside the houseā¦
You won, though, no denying that. Too bad $1.2 million aināt stopping that bullet.
Track 3: Misery prod. Kenny Segal
This was the first single, the first taste, the first time we got to really sink our teeth into *Golliwog*. Over a Kenny Segal beat as jazzy as anything on Maps, woods spins a tale of a doomed love triangle into a 2-minute treatise on celebrity and vampirism. And this isnāt 1922; we get to see all the gnarliest bits, breasts heaving, blood and spit mixing beneath the rising sun.
This is a tour de force of allusions, Stephen Kingās eponymous novel giving way to DOOMās gas drawls giving way to Toni Morrison and her doomed Sethe. woods knows heās obsessed, but he also knows he canāt help but let it consume him. Some love is just too thick. "Misery," much like its namesake novel, is brutal as an axe swinging at an ankle, and just as swift. But what a way to tease an album.
Track 4: BLK XMAS (ft. Bruiser Wolf) prod. Sadhugold
He just canāt help himself. Huge placement with billy woods, a track named after a legendary 1974 slasher flick, a Sadhugold beat best described as lurching? And heās still going to get a Frank Gore bar off. Bruiser Wolfās just that special. This is the first feature on the album, and, as with a few other features here, woods uses it as a tone setter, less fleshing out a concept and more setting a vibe. And what a vibe this is. Wolf takes us through the hood, every angle of it, from the "grandmas in pajamas" to the armed robberies and eviction notices. Nothing is sugar-coated, nothing is softened, and while Wolf and woods both see the humor in even the darkest situations, nothing here is ever really funny.
When woods does finally rap, he spins out a tale of a family kicked out right before the holidays, every detail razor sharp, a Wes Anderson frame in verse form (if Wes had grown up idolizing John Carpenter instead of Roman Polanski, maybe). As usual for this album, woods blends in allusions to the works of King and Bradbury ("tent cities on the edge of town") with his own twisted visions, all off-kilter rocking horses and ultrasounds full of doom. Itās as bleak a story as heās ever told, and all the more crushing for coming after Bruiser Wolfās nasal-as-shyt panorama.
Track 5: Waterproof Mascara prod. Preservation
Preservation, man. On an album with the guy produced "Meet the Grahams" (a truly demented beat that seems to have been produced by trapping the souls of Drakeās ancestors in a grand piano), this is my pick for scariest instrumental here, hands down. Weāve got what seems to be a woman sobbing, woodwinds fluttering, a few sparse drums beats to keep things moving. Itās empty like a gallows after a hanging, just the body spinning in the wind. Itās the right backdrop though, for what becomes the most intensely personal song on the project, split over three short verses.
Verse one opens on a bad miracle, flipping "Houthi" lyrics into something even more paranoid. Death lurks around even corner, and once you invite him in, no amount of polite hints is going to get him out. Verse two finds woods studying Slyvia Plath and dead slavemasters. We close the song on lucky number three, full of more Hiding Places callbacks, another story about a kid left somewhere kids were never supposed to be. In under three minutes, we get a portrait of how the woods we see today was shaped by his childhood, how his fatherās ghost haunts every crevice of his life, how sometimes all you can do is hit it again off automatic.
continue
Track 6: Counterclockwise prod. The Alchemist
Speaking of The Alchemist, he pops in for a quick horror show of his own. But where Preservationās "Waterproof Mascara" sounded nearly(super)natural, Alās vision is all ticking clocks and phasers set to kill. woods spits through the brain-fog of too little sleep and too many 25-hour days, unspooling one of the most dazzlingly technical verses on GW, dropping bars like "I know she was a pro how she slid out the bedsheets/Grasping gasping fish, I slide 'em in the fresh grease/Spattering, sputtering epithets." Everything slots together neatly, precision cut, the gaps so thin you forgot where the dream ends and the waking world begins.
Track 7: Corinthians (ft. Despot) prod. El-P
PremRockās not wrong: woods really does love a good āvestibuleā line. And then into the *āHungry eyes in thŠµ mirror like Corinthiansā* bar? Wooooooooooooo boy (woods said this was inspired by 1 Corinthians 13:12, but I canāt help but see Boyd Holbrook sans the glasses). Then he just keeps going, the *Spider Hole* callback reimagined for a world in which very little has changed, the wild-ass rhyme schemes around *āstopped for gas in the desert like the House of Saud,ā* the closing lines mocking everyoneās least favorite corporate overlords. Special shyt.
And then, of course, Despot pops up for his biennial verse-of-the-year contender. Counterclockwise clockworks. Despotās also on that callback ish, spinning his "Versailles" verse out into the rap equivalent of Jed Bartlett shouting āYou get Hoynes,ā minus the starry-eyed liberal revisionism. God isn't sending any omens, and the only ghosts walking through that door are the unquiet. Itās just line after vicious line, no crying uncle, no mercy given.
Track 8: Pitchforks & Halos prod. Kenny Segal
Donāt forgot to tip your driver. Otherwise that time machine not going back to the future, you winding up skewered and strung up. Kenny Segal gives us the second of his three beats on Golliwog, a supremely eerie, shambling blend of car exhaust, steel cans, and foghorns. It sounds reanimated, stumbling out the DAW stitchlines visible, an angry mob of lesser producers crowding around the studio gates. Over this monstrosity, woods drops in for a few words, all alliteration and alibis, but even the shortest verses hide gold (see: "the stirring words of dead revolutionaries who were wrong," a line with more material to unpack than some rapperās entire albums). And best believe that every word is lived in, creased, rebuilt so many times the original is gone; donāt ever mistake this for just rhyming.
Track 9: All These Worlds are Yours (ft. E L U C I D) prod. DJ Haram & Shabaka Hutchings
If you needed a demonstration of why Armand Hammer are one of the greatest duos in hip hop history, look no further. The track opens on woods rapping four lines (and four lines only):
"Today, I watched a man die in a hole from the comfort of my home
The drone flew real low, no rush, real slow
He curled up into himself, a fetus in the womb, womb was the Earth
Grenades landed at his feet and he scrabbled in the dirt."
Itās a verse ripped straight off social media, a quick sketch of the violent rot technology has brought into every moment of our lives, carried by Amazon-branded drones. When E L U C I D follows that up, a pair of verses sandwiched between two hooks, the sense of decay is overwhelming. He imagines subliminal messages in his instrumentals, futuristic snuff films played on infinite loops to an audience of one, aged presidents frozen and mummified. And as the song finally crumbles into dust, a militant chant ringing out oāer the land, woods and E L U C I D sit silent in their reinforced bunker, eyes hiding beyond VR goggles, watching the world spin on.
Track 10: Maquiladoras (ft. Al.Divino) prod. Saint Abdullah & Eomac
The hand on the clock spins on. You might be able to slow it down for a moment, let the world fade for an hour, minute, second, but it keeps spinning. You see it half-glimpsed in mirrors, sand falling through a clouded hourglass, ads flashing past on that late-night subway ride, and it was always there, counting down to something youāll never get a chance to see. Lines from tracks long past, reanimated, old friends you never saw again cause if you stayed you knew youād never leave whole, cold nights when they dug the graves, whole scantron full of empty bubbles. And that lonely minute hand tick, tick, ticking on.
Time was never on our side.
Track 11: A Doll Fulla Pins (ft. Yolanda Watson) prod. Jeff Markey & Messiah Musik
When woods this album, he said that it was partially based on a story he wrote as a child, about āāWhen I was nine years old I wrote a story about an evil golliwog. My mother read it and told me it was overly derivative and needed some work.āā We heard it on the albumās opening lines, that *āRagdoll playing dead,ā* but itās not until **A Doll Fulla Pins** that woods truly dives in, and when he does, weāre gifted one of the most heartbreaking tracks on an album. Itās still a horror movie, dialogue in sepia tones, speaking roles fit only for the dead, but one softened a bit by a sense of acceptance. No jumpscares here, no killers with bone-white masks and meat cleavers, just sad, sad dolls with pincushion hearts.
The first half of the track, produced by Jeff Markey, sees woods fleeing a place he knows no good will come from, surrounded by people he canāt trust and would never want to. Yolanda Watson follows him up with what is, for my money, the most beautiful stretch on the album. As the horns swell, she hammers home the albumās central image: "I'm a doll full of pins," just a tool whose pain is used to make others bleed. When we finally pick up the pieces, and Messiah Musikās mutations fully infect those horns and those chugging snares, woods reveals the costs of this lifelong mistrust, in the form of an accursed doll, gnawing quietly at your door. You can build your walls up as high as you want, fashion them out of steel, but itās all the same in the end. The bill comes due.
Track 12: Golgotha prod. Messiah Musik
MF DOOMās "Cellz," the tenth track off the villainās criminally underrated sixth solo album, opens with a reading of a poem by Charles Bukowski: "Born like this, into this/As the chalk faces smile, as Mrs. Death laughs." Here on "Golgotha," we get our own glimpse at the reaper, courtesy of Ray Bradbury imploring us to "flee death:" if only it were so easy.
Over another dark, jazzy loop from Messiah Musik, woods gives us one of his longest verses on the album, all chess pieces sliding across checkerboards, lions in too-small cages, and one-stand-nights with Bukowskiās aforementioned broad. There are ghosts lurking behind every word, just waiting for woods to slip up, but he never does, the rhymes stacking up until thereās nowhere to go but through the factory roof. The closing verse, full of ghastly omens and poisoned nightcaps, reminds us that sometimes commitment is its own reward. Itās no going back no more, and once you pull out that whistle, you best be prepared to use it.
Track 13: Cold Sweat prod. Ant
Bad dreams are only dreams. The ending skit calling back to that "old self dozing in an aisle seat," doppelgƤngers run amok. Alarm clock numbers blur and morph, and woods just laughing, knowing that shyt fake. These nightmares all SVU, ripped from the headlines, interviewers pressing for soundbites and NBA commissioners gripping frozen envelopes. But you get the last laugh, face peeking through the gap between door and frame, landlord begging and pleading, tenant rights code improbable readings. Still wake up with the sheets clammy.
It felt so real though.
Track 14: BLK ZMBY prod. Steel Tipped Dove
Thereās a bad moon rising, dragging the rip tides that drag ships under the waves. Money canāt buy you freedom from its gaze, roof or not, but while youāre here, might as well make the most of the time you bought. Stack up those African presidents, drill that oil, import that car from Germany, Japan, or ole Britannia. And when you find your family shambling 'round the house, skin green, mouths wide, just donāt question it. Donāt trust anyone except those dead slaveowners, faces so regal, frozen in time.
Track 15: Make No Mistake prod. Messiah Musik
Itās that little hesitation, stutter step back, double-cross-over move, the shyt you used to do with your little brother in the driveway, boom-bap blasting out the speaker. woods knows what heās doing, make no mistake. shytās not normal, man. Canāt lie, when itās pen to page, heās the best (letās not argue). Been this way for a while, too, so long you canāt even remember how it started, just what was knocking, in your headphones or at your apartment door, when it did. And when that shyt changes, old ways twisted and remade, "indigenous mountain villages makin' coca paste," you just gotta know how to turn a profit. Itās a new world, even if those old day still haunt you, regret perched atop your shoulders like ravens on chamber doors, knock, knock, knocking.
Track 16: Born Alone prod. Kenny Segal
Nothing supernatural about this one. No vampires hiding behind mic stands, zombies ubering to corporate jobs, no time machines parked behind the crumbling mansions. It isnāt evil, just sad. Bodies laid to rest on tenement stoops, dishelved, shoes there for those brave enough to take them. And thatās how they tell, too, tags on little piggies so the pigs can read the names. woods going back in time just for a pep talk, leaving with wet eyes. History looping like ALC sampling cause years from now the scene repeats anew; mask on so the audience canāt see the tears. And when you tell the story, just remember, no caps spelling the man name.
Track 17: Lead Paint Test (ft. E L U C I D & Cavalier) prod. Willie Green
This is a time-honored tradition. The same billy woods posse cut industrial complex that gave us "Body of Work," "Foolās Gold," "Wonderful," and "NYNEX" is back with a new nightmare. We got E L U C I D kicking off the festivities (cause who else would?), his verse unspooling tales of generational bad luck, passed down like first-day-of-school clothes. Heās followed by Cavalier, whose pair of 2024 albums have catapulted him to the forefront of the Backwoodz roster. Cav pulls off his usual rhyme scheme sorcery, weaving together lines like "These ain't pains, these the regular aches/My mom slaved cause she said ownership was breaking the chains/Me and my father's main bond was that day we cursed out pigs at our gate" with references to Michael Jackson and Arthur Miller. Finally, we get woods, entering his own ancestral Hill House, locked doors swinging open on smoothly oiled hinges, once-crowded front yard now barren. The level of focus here from all three is astounding, each approaching the same story with their own unique eye for detail. Oh, and did I mention the song is backed by a Willie Green beat, with chops courtesy of DJ Mo Niklz? What a posse.
Track 18: Dislocated (ft. E L U C I D) prod. HUMAN ERROR CLUB
Ming the tiger died in 2019, having lived out his post-NYC life at Noahās Ark Animal Sanctuary in Ohio. His time there was more natural than the apartment - other tigers, a pool, an open sky above him - but still, not quite home. A wild beast dislocated, cage bars there no matter how big the cage, roaring a warning, "You can't come in here with me, you can't come in here." Thatās why the face is covered, why he hides in the spotlights and phone cameras, why he has to stay out of reach. Itās hard to be located, to hear voices calling out in the forest and run towards them. Hard not to retreat inward, eyes nervously watching that apartment window, claws stretched out like time.
Track 6: Counterclockwise prod. The Alchemist
Speaking of The Alchemist, he pops in for a quick horror show of his own. But where Preservationās "Waterproof Mascara" sounded nearly(super)natural, Alās vision is all ticking clocks and phasers set to kill. woods spits through the brain-fog of too little sleep and too many 25-hour days, unspooling one of the most dazzlingly technical verses on GW, dropping bars like "I know she was a pro how she slid out the bedsheets/Grasping gasping fish, I slide 'em in the fresh grease/Spattering, sputtering epithets." Everything slots together neatly, precision cut, the gaps so thin you forgot where the dream ends and the waking world begins.
Track 7: Corinthians (ft. Despot) prod. El-P
PremRockās not wrong: woods really does love a good āvestibuleā line. And then into the *āHungry eyes in thŠµ mirror like Corinthiansā* bar? Wooooooooooooo boy (woods said this was inspired by 1 Corinthians 13:12, but I canāt help but see Boyd Holbrook sans the glasses). Then he just keeps going, the *Spider Hole* callback reimagined for a world in which very little has changed, the wild-ass rhyme schemes around *āstopped for gas in the desert like the House of Saud,ā* the closing lines mocking everyoneās least favorite corporate overlords. Special shyt.
And then, of course, Despot pops up for his biennial verse-of-the-year contender. Counterclockwise clockworks. Despotās also on that callback ish, spinning his "Versailles" verse out into the rap equivalent of Jed Bartlett shouting āYou get Hoynes,ā minus the starry-eyed liberal revisionism. God isn't sending any omens, and the only ghosts walking through that door are the unquiet. Itās just line after vicious line, no crying uncle, no mercy given.
Track 8: Pitchforks & Halos prod. Kenny Segal
Donāt forgot to tip your driver. Otherwise that time machine not going back to the future, you winding up skewered and strung up. Kenny Segal gives us the second of his three beats on Golliwog, a supremely eerie, shambling blend of car exhaust, steel cans, and foghorns. It sounds reanimated, stumbling out the DAW stitchlines visible, an angry mob of lesser producers crowding around the studio gates. Over this monstrosity, woods drops in for a few words, all alliteration and alibis, but even the shortest verses hide gold (see: "the stirring words of dead revolutionaries who were wrong," a line with more material to unpack than some rapperās entire albums). And best believe that every word is lived in, creased, rebuilt so many times the original is gone; donāt ever mistake this for just rhyming.
Track 9: All These Worlds are Yours (ft. E L U C I D) prod. DJ Haram & Shabaka Hutchings
If you needed a demonstration of why Armand Hammer are one of the greatest duos in hip hop history, look no further. The track opens on woods rapping four lines (and four lines only):
"Today, I watched a man die in a hole from the comfort of my home
The drone flew real low, no rush, real slow
He curled up into himself, a fetus in the womb, womb was the Earth
Grenades landed at his feet and he scrabbled in the dirt."
Itās a verse ripped straight off social media, a quick sketch of the violent rot technology has brought into every moment of our lives, carried by Amazon-branded drones. When E L U C I D follows that up, a pair of verses sandwiched between two hooks, the sense of decay is overwhelming. He imagines subliminal messages in his instrumentals, futuristic snuff films played on infinite loops to an audience of one, aged presidents frozen and mummified. And as the song finally crumbles into dust, a militant chant ringing out oāer the land, woods and E L U C I D sit silent in their reinforced bunker, eyes hiding beyond VR goggles, watching the world spin on.
Track 10: Maquiladoras (ft. Al.Divino) prod. Saint Abdullah & Eomac
The hand on the clock spins on. You might be able to slow it down for a moment, let the world fade for an hour, minute, second, but it keeps spinning. You see it half-glimpsed in mirrors, sand falling through a clouded hourglass, ads flashing past on that late-night subway ride, and it was always there, counting down to something youāll never get a chance to see. Lines from tracks long past, reanimated, old friends you never saw again cause if you stayed you knew youād never leave whole, cold nights when they dug the graves, whole scantron full of empty bubbles. And that lonely minute hand tick, tick, ticking on.
Time was never on our side.
Track 11: A Doll Fulla Pins (ft. Yolanda Watson) prod. Jeff Markey & Messiah Musik
When woods this album, he said that it was partially based on a story he wrote as a child, about āāWhen I was nine years old I wrote a story about an evil golliwog. My mother read it and told me it was overly derivative and needed some work.āā We heard it on the albumās opening lines, that *āRagdoll playing dead,ā* but itās not until **A Doll Fulla Pins** that woods truly dives in, and when he does, weāre gifted one of the most heartbreaking tracks on an album. Itās still a horror movie, dialogue in sepia tones, speaking roles fit only for the dead, but one softened a bit by a sense of acceptance. No jumpscares here, no killers with bone-white masks and meat cleavers, just sad, sad dolls with pincushion hearts.
The first half of the track, produced by Jeff Markey, sees woods fleeing a place he knows no good will come from, surrounded by people he canāt trust and would never want to. Yolanda Watson follows him up with what is, for my money, the most beautiful stretch on the album. As the horns swell, she hammers home the albumās central image: "I'm a doll full of pins," just a tool whose pain is used to make others bleed. When we finally pick up the pieces, and Messiah Musikās mutations fully infect those horns and those chugging snares, woods reveals the costs of this lifelong mistrust, in the form of an accursed doll, gnawing quietly at your door. You can build your walls up as high as you want, fashion them out of steel, but itās all the same in the end. The bill comes due.
Track 12: Golgotha prod. Messiah Musik
MF DOOMās "Cellz," the tenth track off the villainās criminally underrated sixth solo album, opens with a reading of a poem by Charles Bukowski: "Born like this, into this/As the chalk faces smile, as Mrs. Death laughs." Here on "Golgotha," we get our own glimpse at the reaper, courtesy of Ray Bradbury imploring us to "flee death:" if only it were so easy.
Over another dark, jazzy loop from Messiah Musik, woods gives us one of his longest verses on the album, all chess pieces sliding across checkerboards, lions in too-small cages, and one-stand-nights with Bukowskiās aforementioned broad. There are ghosts lurking behind every word, just waiting for woods to slip up, but he never does, the rhymes stacking up until thereās nowhere to go but through the factory roof. The closing verse, full of ghastly omens and poisoned nightcaps, reminds us that sometimes commitment is its own reward. Itās no going back no more, and once you pull out that whistle, you best be prepared to use it.
Track 13: Cold Sweat prod. Ant
Bad dreams are only dreams. The ending skit calling back to that "old self dozing in an aisle seat," doppelgƤngers run amok. Alarm clock numbers blur and morph, and woods just laughing, knowing that shyt fake. These nightmares all SVU, ripped from the headlines, interviewers pressing for soundbites and NBA commissioners gripping frozen envelopes. But you get the last laugh, face peeking through the gap between door and frame, landlord begging and pleading, tenant rights code improbable readings. Still wake up with the sheets clammy.
It felt so real though.
Track 14: BLK ZMBY prod. Steel Tipped Dove
Thereās a bad moon rising, dragging the rip tides that drag ships under the waves. Money canāt buy you freedom from its gaze, roof or not, but while youāre here, might as well make the most of the time you bought. Stack up those African presidents, drill that oil, import that car from Germany, Japan, or ole Britannia. And when you find your family shambling 'round the house, skin green, mouths wide, just donāt question it. Donāt trust anyone except those dead slaveowners, faces so regal, frozen in time.
Track 15: Make No Mistake prod. Messiah Musik
Itās that little hesitation, stutter step back, double-cross-over move, the shyt you used to do with your little brother in the driveway, boom-bap blasting out the speaker. woods knows what heās doing, make no mistake. shytās not normal, man. Canāt lie, when itās pen to page, heās the best (letās not argue). Been this way for a while, too, so long you canāt even remember how it started, just what was knocking, in your headphones or at your apartment door, when it did. And when that shyt changes, old ways twisted and remade, "indigenous mountain villages makin' coca paste," you just gotta know how to turn a profit. Itās a new world, even if those old day still haunt you, regret perched atop your shoulders like ravens on chamber doors, knock, knock, knocking.
Track 16: Born Alone prod. Kenny Segal
Nothing supernatural about this one. No vampires hiding behind mic stands, zombies ubering to corporate jobs, no time machines parked behind the crumbling mansions. It isnāt evil, just sad. Bodies laid to rest on tenement stoops, dishelved, shoes there for those brave enough to take them. And thatās how they tell, too, tags on little piggies so the pigs can read the names. woods going back in time just for a pep talk, leaving with wet eyes. History looping like ALC sampling cause years from now the scene repeats anew; mask on so the audience canāt see the tears. And when you tell the story, just remember, no caps spelling the man name.
Track 17: Lead Paint Test (ft. E L U C I D & Cavalier) prod. Willie Green
This is a time-honored tradition. The same billy woods posse cut industrial complex that gave us "Body of Work," "Foolās Gold," "Wonderful," and "NYNEX" is back with a new nightmare. We got E L U C I D kicking off the festivities (cause who else would?), his verse unspooling tales of generational bad luck, passed down like first-day-of-school clothes. Heās followed by Cavalier, whose pair of 2024 albums have catapulted him to the forefront of the Backwoodz roster. Cav pulls off his usual rhyme scheme sorcery, weaving together lines like "These ain't pains, these the regular aches/My mom slaved cause she said ownership was breaking the chains/Me and my father's main bond was that day we cursed out pigs at our gate" with references to Michael Jackson and Arthur Miller. Finally, we get woods, entering his own ancestral Hill House, locked doors swinging open on smoothly oiled hinges, once-crowded front yard now barren. The level of focus here from all three is astounding, each approaching the same story with their own unique eye for detail. Oh, and did I mention the song is backed by a Willie Green beat, with chops courtesy of DJ Mo Niklz? What a posse.
Track 18: Dislocated (ft. E L U C I D) prod. HUMAN ERROR CLUB
Ming the tiger died in 2019, having lived out his post-NYC life at Noahās Ark Animal Sanctuary in Ohio. His time there was more natural than the apartment - other tigers, a pool, an open sky above him - but still, not quite home. A wild beast dislocated, cage bars there no matter how big the cage, roaring a warning, "You can't come in here with me, you can't come in here." Thatās why the face is covered, why he hides in the spotlights and phone cameras, why he has to stay out of reach. Itās hard to be located, to hear voices calling out in the forest and run towards them. Hard not to retreat inward, eyes nervously watching that apartment window, claws stretched out like time.
woods is incredible, i didnt find out about him until this year (my fault for not paying attention)
