RSSBilly Woods [extended]
- Aethiopes [Backwoodz Studioz, 2022] ★★
- Church [Backwoodz Studioz, 2022] B+
- Maps [Backwoodz Studioz, 2023] A−
- Golliwog [Backwoodz Studioz, 2025] A−
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Consumer Guide Reviews:
Aethiopes [Backwoodz Studioz, 2022]
Makes sense that the only rapper sired by a Marxist scholar should concoct the best-informed stock market rap ever, and also that it's not terribly hooky ("Versailles," "NYNEX") ★★
Church [Backwoodz Studioz, 2022]
You gotta admire this guy. His groaned raps crackpot yet deeply informed, his electrosymph beats textural by default while falling short of arresting or hypnotic, he steeps his rhymes in the lore of the church in the jungle his grandfather built and via his Marxist dad takes armed revolt more seriously than Immortal Technique and Dead Prez combined. "The shit I wrote can't do it on a phone," he brags amid references to "Ceaucescu's chess moves," "an Amharic Bible she found on 113th," a stabbing at Shakespeare in the Park, and A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. "Win or lose the Maoists is still glum," he reports. Which may be because "When the revolution was over they gave 'em half of what they promised." B+
Billy Woods and Kenny Segal: Maps [Backwoodz Studioz, 2023]
With crucial help from Serengeti and R.A.P. Ferreira pal Kenny Segal, who adds crucial musical ballast to rhymes that cruise to a soft landing on a finale that finds reason for militance in a playground, Woods finally delivers music worthy of a mind-body continuum whose wholeness there was never reason to doubt. Danny Brown fucks shit up and Aesop Rock nails shit down, rappers are stricken with gout and there's a suicide at the gentrifier's next door, the acknowledged healing qualities of zithromyecin and New York City tapwater fail to compensate for peace cut with dread, your taxes underwriting police brutality settlements, and other "things you can't undo." With "every victory pyrrhic," you do make it a principle to skip soundcheck. But definitely not to skip the playground, or to scare your kid off the jungle gym you know can be dangerous and he doesn't yet. A−
Golliwog [Backwoodz Studioz, 2025]
The most literate as well as the most Marxist frontman/mastermind ever to go over the heads of alt-rap cognoscenti types, Woods has never fully mastered the distinction between rhyming and flow. Even when he's linking (and rhyming!) "armed robberies," "carbon copies," and "autopsies" he's kind of prosaic, more a self-made speechifier than a born poet. But he's so well-informed you stick with him—the relative plainness of his delivery makes you want to hear (I said hear) more about "bad hamburger meat," "pre Xmas eviction," "I spent all summer diggin' out a grave/Can't run with the wolves when you're a stray," "if you never came back from the dead you can't tell me shit," "the king's dead and your uncle's not my friend," "staggerin' postcolonial African zombi state," "I rock a clean pair of socks every day just in case," and last but not least "West 86th three beautiful kids and they wake up and make their own beds." A−