billy woods's outstanding 2023 album Maps was a travelogue filled with food, weed and backstage shenanigans — a far-ranging tour around both the world and woods's singular psyche.
But if Maps blew the doors wide open, GOLLIWOG retreats back into a haunted house of creaks, moans and ominous voices, sounding a bit like the spooky soundscapes of 2022's Aethiopes and spiritually evoking the crumbling mansion that adorns the cover of 2019's Hiding Places.
"Waterproof Mascara" is surely one of the most harrowing rap tracks in recent memory, a chronicle of domestic abuse made visceral by a woman's whimpering cry embedded into the beat. On "Born Alone," atop a seasick piano loop produced by Maps collaborator Kenny Segal, woods reveals, "I rock a clean pair of socks every day," just in case he gets murdered and someone steals the shoes off his body. Other tracks chronicle the US's financial interest in Gaza ("Corinthians") and waterboarding innocent political prisoners ("Counterclockwise").
Full of horror and self-described Afro-pessimism, GOLLIWOG is frequently grim. And yet, it's not a difficult listen, since woods is simply too clever of a writer for him not to tickle my sense of humour. On "Cold Sweat," woods describes a landlord trying to kick him out in order to sell to the building, asking woods, "How you want this thing to end?"
In response, woods abandons the beat entirely, a smirk creeping into his voice as he plays dumb: "End? Who said — who said anything about — hold on, hold on, why would it end? I love it here. I'm not trying to go anywhere man, y'all my people. For reals. Why would it end?"