Get the latest gossip
Billy Woods: Golliwog review – one of the most engrossing, unnerving records you’ll hear this year
The New York rapper confronts trauma and state-sanctioned terror with his latest release, pulling out innumerable images of inhumanity
Golliwog has the ambience of a horror movie: dissonant strings, like nails on a chalkboard, form the basis of the track Star87; agonised screams are sampled throughout; every so often, an ominous drone will fill a song to the point of overwhelm. On that level alone, New York underground icon Billy Woods ’ latest album would be a feat of sound design, and one of the year’s most engrossing, unnerving records. He still finds time for moments of beauty amid the bleakness – the gorgeous saxophone that ends Maquiladoras; the fuzzy synth sample on Pitchforks & Halos; the beat on Make No Mistake that feels almost adjacent to dance music – but Golliwog is dominated by inherited trauma and state-sanctioned terror, and Woods assesses it all with horrible clarity.
Or read this on The Guardian