On “Make No Mistake,” from his new album, GOLLIWOG, billy woods tells us: “I told a few lies in my time / but never once over a beat”. This is undoubtedly true in the artistic sense (as Picasso supposedly said, “Art is the lie that reveals the truth”. As Jeezy succinctly added, “I spit the truth, every noun, every verb”). woods’ raps, however/of course, make use of autofiction as much as autobiography. His lyrics (as well as Jeezy’s and Picasso’s paintings) are drawn from experience – literal, imagined, absorbed – a bona fide and aesthetically authentic representation of who he is as a person and creator.
That said, with GOLLIWOG, he’s at his most diffuse. Frequent samples reference politics, pop culture, film, etc., nudging his work more into the collage realm than we’ve seen before. While employing “honest” lyricism, he’s at his most poetically deconstructive, making greater use of fragments and non-sequiturs. Additionally, the use of many and diverse producers (15, to be exact) has the effect of intriguingly undermining a sense of continuity. All in all, while GOLLIWOG showcases the lyrical acumen and emotional punch that we’ve come to expect from woods, it also represents some of his most deflective, centrifugal, and elusive work.
“Jumpscare” launches with disparate sounds, blending B-horror accents and what resemble tinkles from a kid’s music box (producer Steel Tipped Dove). “Ragdoll playing dead / rabid dog in the yard / car won’t start” is GOLLIWOG’s opening lyrical blast. The scene is set: bleakness, dysfunction, inanimation. As the track progresses, the sonics grow harsher. “The dead drift like empty boats / we fled to the mountains / but there’s nowhere the white man won’t go”, woods elaborates, employing a mythic image that recalls George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, a reference to the African diaspora, and a cutting comment re the West’s racist history.
On “Misery”, he teams with Kenny Segal, who produced 2019’s Hiding Places and 2023’s Maps. Psychedelic jazz meets electronic drone buoyed by a beat rampage. woods alludes to sex, attraction, pornographic vibes, and violence, conjuring the vapidity of modern transactionalism, on individual and institutional levels. “Pitchforks & Halos”, also produced by Segal, brings to mind the buzz of a beehive crossed with the fevered hum of an airport at peak time, the moment in a fright scene when the killer leaps from a shadow, perhaps the score during an action sequence in a vintage noir flick.
If previous albums largely featured woods and his producers seeking integrations, GOLLIWOG brims with truncations, fragmentations, and dissonances. woods himself is at his most ambivalent, eschewing narrative resolutions. He’s often lost in uncertainty, teetering above an abyss that Nietzsche, along with Earl Sweatshirt and Denzel Curry, would recognize. Unlike 2022’s Aethiopes, there’s no overriding atmosphere here that tonally defines the project. Unlike Maps, there’s no overarching theme that weaves together the sequence. Instead, woods’ lyrics often compete with the beats and swells, while the various production styles are divergent, to say the least. The result is a fertile, often riveting series of loose storylines, potent imagery, and relentless fluxes, eloquent musings unfurling during a cosmic storm.
“Waterproof Mascara”, produced by Preservation, who also helmed Aethiopes, opens with eerie music and a sample of a woman crying, as if she’s been abducted. The sound is at once cliché and rigorously curated (taken contextually, the cliché is transformed into the satirical, the mock-epic, even the quasi-archetypal). “Don’t trust anyone”, woods says. Dreamscape? Performance art? Note to self re: what to discuss at my next therapy session? “Counterclockwise” is equally disorienting, opening with an opinionated talk-show guest speaking about sleep states and metabolic rates. woods moves from descriptions of being in bed with a “pro” to an image of grease spattering. The Alchemist offers a master class on audial montage. The result is one of woods’ most systemically fractured yet compelling mixes, capturing the anarchic qualities of the digital life.
“Lead Paint Test” includes a notable guest appearance by woods’ Armand Hammer partner, ELUCID. Willie Green’s production is a well-layered (and unstable) palimpsest of horns, beats, and ambient noise. “All These Worlds Are Yours” (produced by Shabaka Hutchings & DJ Haram), meanwhile, blends ambient busyness with lyrical precision: “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 a womb / womb was the earth / grenades landed at his feet / and he scrabbled in the dirt”. The mix of peripheral voices, woods’ confrontive lyrics that invoke American hegemony, and a creepy Black Mirror-esque overtone make for a disorienting track. The listener gropes for a focus, which, if found, is almost immediately lost, as some other sound or gestalt grows prominent in the mix. Unpredictability. Uncontrollability. The inherent insubstantiality of phenomena and self.
Such is GOLLIWOG, a significant experiment for woods. Lyrically, he’s as eloquent as ever, moving from abstract images to direct statements, from confessional rants to journalistic quips, from the troughs of despair to the apexes of mania. His use of multiple producers pays off, as well, helping to sustain a liminal space. GOLLIWOG is a multifaceted mandala, and woods is painfully aware that identity is built on and of sand. In this way, he yokes nihilism and Zen, pointing to meaninglessness and the infinite. Assisted by his producers, he spotlights the absurdity and nightmare of human existence while lauding the magical properties of art.
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