You want to hearken to Billy Woods’ horrorcore masterpiece for the A24 crowd

Billy Woods has one of many highest batting averages within the recreation. Between his solo data like Hiding Locations and Maps, and his collaborative albums with Elucid as Armand Hammer, the person has a number of stone-cold classics beneath his belt. And, whereas nobody would ever declare that Woods’ albums had been light-hearted fare (these usually are not occasion data), Golliwog represents his darkest so far.

This isn’t your typical horrorcore document. Others, like Geto Boys, Gravediggaz, and Insane Clown Posse, attain for slasher aesthetics and shock ways. However what Billy Woods has crafted is extra A24 than Blumhouse.

Positive, the primary observe is known as “Jumpscare,” and it opens with the sound of a movie reel spinning up, adopted by a creepy music field and the road: “Ragdoll enjoying useless. Rabid canine within the yard, automotive received’t begin, it’s bees in your head.” It’s setting you up for the everyday horror flick gimmickry. However by the tip, it’s psychological torture. A cacophony of voices varieties a mattress for unidentifiable screeching noises, and Woods drops what appears like a mission assertion:

“The English language is violence, I hotwired it. I bought a maintain of the grasp’s instruments and bought dialed in.”

All through the document, Woods turns to his producers to craft not low cost scares, however pressure, to make the listener really feel uneasy. “Waterproof Mascara” turns a girl’s sobs right into a rhythmic motif. On “Pitchforks & Halos” Kenny Segal conjures the aural equal of a POV shot of a serial killer. And “All These Worlds are Yours” produced by DJ Haram has extra in widespread with the early industrial of Throbbing Gristle than it does even among the different tracks on the document, like “Golgotha” which pairs boombap drums with New Orleans funeral horns.

That dense, at occasions scattered manufacturing is paired with traces that juxtapose the real-world horrors of oppression and colonialism, with scenes that really feel taken straight from Deliver Her Again: “Trapped a housefly in an upside-down pint glass and waited for it to die.” And later, Woods seamlessly transitions from boasting to warning individuals about turning their backs on the genocide in Gaza on “Corinthians”:

When you by no means got here again from the useless you may’t inform me shit
Twelve billion USD hovering over the Gaza Strip
You don’t wanna know what it value to stay
What it value to cover behind eyelids
When your again turnt, secret cannibals lick they lips

The document options a few of Woods’ deftest lyricism, balancing confrontation with philosophy, horror with emotion. Billy Woods’ Golliwog is out there on Bandcamp and on most main streaming providers, together with Apple Music, Qobuz, Deezer, YouTube Music, and Spotify.