Country : United States Label : Backwoodz Studioz Genres and styles : Hip Hop / Hip Hop / hip-hop abstrait / hip-hop alternatif / Horrorcore Year : 2025

billy woods – GOLLIWOG

· by Stephan Boissonneault

billy woods has always trafficked in the shadows with his solo and collab albums. There’s always been a form of horror and evil lurking, but GOLLIWOG is something else entirely. It’s not just dark — it’s an album that moves like smoke through the ruin of American Black mythology, drawing its power from what’s been falsely buried and what still festers. With GOLLIWOG, woods delivers one of his most conceptually pointed and emotionally unsettling projects to date — a fever dream of racial trauma, coded menace, and cultural decay. It feels like looking at a piece of abstract art. woods wastes no time with his rap flow and throws you into the real-life nightmares in the first couple lines of his raps.

From the opening track “Jumpscare,” woods sets the tone with dissonant textures and haunted dusty music box samples that don’t just accompany his voice — they stalk it and his story about a ragdoll—the Golliwog, a childhood book character derived from the racist minstrel shows in the early 19th century that was then sold as a toy up unitl the 1970s. Instead of just sharing the history of the racist doll, woods uses the Golliwog as a moment of fear and dread for black people in America, all throughout the album. For example, the Golliwog appears again in “A Doll Fulla Pins featuring Yolanda Watson,” which might be my favourite track on this album because of Watson’s soulful RnB vocals.

The production, handled by a cadre of underground alchemists, including Kenny Segal whom he dropped Maps with back in 2023, veers into horrorcore territory without the gimmicks. These beats don’t pop; they lurk. It’s ambient, industrial, and deeply cinematic, reminiscent of a horror score filtered through a broken speaker. And then we have woods angry, sometimes spoken word verse with so much aliteration and visual stimulus paint his tales. No one really raps like woods. His bars carry a visceral charge. He dissects the grotesque legacies of caricature and religion on “Golgotha,” surveillance and war on “All These Worlds are Yours,” incarceration and living on “Cold Sweat,” and historical revisionism. The closest we get to a typical modern bragadocious rap song is the jazzy horn-led “Misery,” which woods takes direct references from Stephen King’s book and uses samples from the gothic horror film, Beloved.

I will say, GOLLIWOG is a dense album and perhaps too dense for the typical rap crowd who wants singles for easy revisits. It’s not an easy listen, but if you just sit and decide to experience it, it’s quite the trip.

Latest 360 Content

FIJM | Fievel is Glauque For Dessert… Dessert loaded!

FIJM | Fievel is Glauque For Dessert… Dessert loaded!

FIJM | Misc: Beat Bouquet Well Garnished!

FIJM | Misc: Beat Bouquet Well Garnished!

FIJM | Alexis Lombre and the Holy Spirit in the South Side of Chicago

FIJM | Alexis Lombre and the Holy Spirit in the South Side of Chicago

FIJM | Allison Russel’s Apotheosis Concert in Her Hometown

FIJM | Allison Russel’s Apotheosis Concert in Her Hometown

FIJM I Best Dressed, Most Possessed: Fantastic Negrito Stupefies Rogers Stage

FIJM I Best Dressed, Most Possessed: Fantastic Negrito Stupefies Rogers Stage

FIJM 2025 | Beth McKenna : raising her Momentum

FIJM 2025 | Beth McKenna : raising her Momentum

Nuits d’Afrique | Immersion In The World of Stogie T

Nuits d’Afrique | Immersion In The World of Stogie T

FIJM | Julius Rodriguez, Jazz Groove Ace

FIJM | Julius Rodriguez, Jazz Groove Ace

FIJM | Men I Trust Shines Brightly on The Place des Festivals

FIJM | Men I Trust Shines Brightly on The Place des Festivals

FIJM | Anomalie and Lettieri: A New Musical Friendship, Developing in Real Time

FIJM | Anomalie and Lettieri: A New Musical Friendship, Developing in Real Time

FIJM | Linda May Han Oh, A Role Model for Female Double-Bass Players

FIJM | Linda May Han Oh, A Role Model for Female Double-Bass Players

Nuits d’Afrique | La Chiva Gantiva As Seen by Rafael Espinel

Nuits d’Afrique | La Chiva Gantiva As Seen by Rafael Espinel

Suoni | The Spiritual Quest, The End in Transcendence

Suoni | The Spiritual Quest, The End in Transcendence

FIJM | Thundercat, A Feline on The Loose

FIJM | Thundercat, A Feline on The Loose

FIJM | Bill Frisell, Thomas Morgan and Rudy Royston Exposed

FIJM | Bill Frisell, Thomas Morgan and Rudy Royston Exposed

FIJM | Branford Marsalis Among Four MF’s Playin’ Tunes… Live!

FIJM | Branford Marsalis Among Four MF’s Playin’ Tunes… Live!

FIJM | About Derrick Hodge’s Idea of the Color of Noize

FIJM | About Derrick Hodge’s Idea of the Color of Noize

FIJM | Queen of Afrobeats, Ayra confirms her status as a Global… Starr

FIJM | Queen of Afrobeats, Ayra confirms her status as a Global… Starr

FIJM | Black Jazz by Marquis Hill

FIJM | Black Jazz by Marquis Hill

Festival de Lanaudière | Leonardo Garcia Alarcon/Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea: being marketwise

Festival de Lanaudière | Leonardo Garcia Alarcon/Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea: being marketwise

FIJM | Nate Smith and his Supremely Talented Quartet

FIJM | Nate Smith and his Supremely Talented Quartet

Nuits d’Afrique 2025 | Tyrane Mondeny Presents Her Mandingo Soul

Nuits d’Afrique 2025 | Tyrane Mondeny Presents Her Mandingo Soul

FIJM | Nai Palm? Creature of Exception! Hawa B? Future Star!

FIJM | Nai Palm? Creature of Exception! Hawa B? Future Star!

FIJM 2025 | Funky funky, Trombone Shorty

FIJM 2025 | Funky funky, Trombone Shorty

Subscribe to our newsletter