Artist: billy woods

Album: Aethiopes)

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“Along the reaches of the street

Held in a lunar synthesis,

Whispering lunar incantations

Dissolve the floors of memory.”

-T.S. Eliot, “Rhapsody on a Windy Night”

When I first listened to billy woods’ Aethiopes, I didn’t notice the prick. In a recent interview for Brooklyn Magazine, woods remarks on his work, “’I want to make the true believers as uncomfortable as the hardened cynics… I am here to plunge a knife into the gaps in that makeshift armor, so you can feel it, see the blood and know that there is no protection.’” The interview was in support of two albums woods released this year: his recent project Church, produced entirely with Messiah Musik, and his first album of 2022, Aethiopes. Released on April 8, 2022, this album didn’t land for me at first. Perhaps it was that I didn’t wrap my mind around woods’ dense lyrics, or that the production helmed entirely by DJ Preservation sounded alien to my ears. And yet, unbeknownst to me, the album had already pierced me: as the year continued, I found myself revisiting this project above all others in what was one of the best years for hip-hop in recent memory. There was something in the darkness of the sound, something in how the jilted piano lines, limping drums, and woods’ blasé delivery fused together that inspired me to keep digging. At the time of writing this review, I have not found the bottom. In fact, I believe that this album is in the rare class of artistic works that is so varied in its valid interpretations that such a “bottom” does not exist.

Among many other possibilities, this album speaks to me as an expression of supplanted identity. The derealization of history as a result of generational trauma is not a foreign subject to billy woods’ work, but Aethiopes brings further nuance to this idea by investigating the mechanisms by which this past is obscured and replaced. The title itself, an archaic word used by European colonials to refer to the dark-skinned people of Africa, implies not only a detachment from history, but from self-determination itself. The most succinct expression of this idea is delivered not by woods, but by featured artist Boldy James on the track “Sauvage”: “Dug down in my soul and did some soul searchin’/All I found was a police report for a missin’ person.” Not only does the sentiment expressed by Boldy James invoke a loss of self-knowledge, but this same loss is notably expressed as a police report, a form emblematic of systemic oppression.

Before reviewing the album track-by-track, it is also worth mentioning woods’ atemporal lyricism. In order to trace such complex ideas that spans centuries, billy woods’ lyrics proceed in a consistent fashion that likewise spans centuries and unifies them under one idea. Take for instance the following passage from the track “Haarlem,” in which woods references the linguistic corruption inherent in Afrikaans, the recent work of fellow abstract rapper Earl Sweatshirt, and the desecration of pyramids along the Nile River: “Speaking Afrikaans, British accent, I want mine from back when/Thebe said the wind get the ashes in the end, bruv/The gorilla severed every inoculated limb, left ‘em with stubs/Ziggurats on the Nile, bought the house and tore it down/All your yesterdays in one neat pile.” These “yesterdays” woods refers to encompass the loss of traditional language, original architecture, and all the culture contained therein. What remains is a pile of rubble, near-impossible to sift through without being crushed under the weight of what was lost.

Aethiopes’ opens with “Asylum,” a rigidly avoidant track where paranoia is a way to cope. Over discordant stabs of Ethiopian jazz and faint static, billy woods makes his entrance by detailing an anecdote from his childhood in Zimbabwe, “I think Mengistu Haile Mariam is my neighbor/Whoever it is moved in and put an automated gate up/Repainted brick walls atop which now cameras rotated.” By imagining his neighbor as the deposed head of Ethiopia’s socialist government, woods gives himself a way to distract from a crumbling home life: “Downstairs I hear my mother breaking dishes, my father trippin’/It’s been quite bad lately, high tension.” His curiosity leads him to peer voyeuristically at his neighbor’s personnel, stealing glances at wounded secretaries and menacing security guards as his home life threatens to destroy his distraction, “Not sure what I’m looking for, but I’ll know when I find/My mother sent the gardener to look for me, but the sky is a great place to hide.” Then speaking as an adult in the chorus, woods warns us that such habits can cause us to become “Ever so slowly, slowly locked up in your own house.” This reaction of indifference to life’s disappointments is an emotional throughline for the entire album, and is applied to more general concepts of generational trauma and systemic oppression. The track concludes with a sample from the 1970 film Kongi’s Harvest, in which the deposed king Oba Danlola confers with his brother inside a detention camp about the nature of captivity, “But, so does captivity look well on a lamb we are fattening up for the feast… What happens when the great day comes and there is only a calabash under the wrapper?” In woods’ view, should we remain in captivity self-imposed or otherwise, our freedom is worthless we finally obtain it.

The next track, “No Hard Feelings,” flips a sample from Italian prog rock band Picchio dal Pozzo’s “Seppia.” Over a bed of cacophonous wind instrument drones, woods gives one of his most impassioned vocal performances. Here he is confronted with the image of a destitute drug addict in the street and rapping with such urgency that it feels like he’s desperately drawing the thin line separating himself from a drug addict on the streets, “That’s that empty pipe hissin’, that’s him crying and twitchin’/That’s the vanishing point in the distance/Between us just the glass thickness/Cracked mirrors flash rictus.” However, even as woods struggles to separate himself from this visage of poverty, his own fortunate circumstances leave him wracked with guilt and an “Aftertaste [of] bitter melon and lemon peelings.” The second verse sees woods now on the receiving end of human indifference with defeat in his voice, “After all that, she no-showed/The suite already paid for, so I toweled the door and smoked dope… I dozed, woke up and ‘no hard feelings’ was all it said on my phone.”

The ghostly percussion that opens “Wharves” sounds like wind chimes stirred by a breeze from hell. Quiet discomfort is married with dusty and processional drums, and it is with this momentum that woods further explores socioeconomic disparities, the dawn of colonialism, and the inaction of indigenous people to address their imminent misfortune. woods views capitalist society as profoundly hopeless, with poverty “washing over” the poor and the pursuit of wealth sending the hopeful swinging into the “maw” of squalor. woods then describes the arrival of colonials as diseased monsters in the water, “Shipwrecked Europeans swimmin’ with the virus/Shot out like God’s semen/’Fuck the world,’ Pac’s screamin’/Crack missions for the heathens.” In combination with evocations of the crack epidemic and the social commentary of his artistic predecessors, woods’ profane imagery paints colonialism as wholly outside the natural order of the world.

The title “Sauvage” is another example of European names and notions being used to define others. In this track, woods and featured artists Boldy James and Gabe Nandez examine savagery and the means by which it perpetuates. Boldy enters first with a show-stopping verse about personal identity. He is critical of his own flaws, describing himself as a “Child of God, might stray away at times, though I’m still a servant.” Boldy also tries his hand at woods’ atemporal style to describe the difficulty of “making it” in the industry as a contemporary Black artist by likening it to mid-century minstrel performances, “Freestylin’ on that road, never did rehearse it/On the janky promoter’s tour through the Chitlin’ Circuit.” woods then steps to the mic with one of his most forceful and cinematic verses. Beginning with an anecdote of domestic abuse, woods details the spread of violence and savagery through an entire community in a manner similar to the “virus” the colonials carried in the preceding track. The verse begins already amid violence, which suggests that this cycle of savagery began long before “Dre shot his uncle for beatin’ his mom.” We don’t see how previous violence inspired the actions of Dre’s uncle, but from here on we see how Dre’s savagery inspires further violence and savagery in his community, “A few classmates made the news, police pursuits.” Keeping with the themes of dehumanization, woods reminds us that the spread of pain and violence is not always out of malice, but also from not valuing oneself. He drives this point home with disturbingly impersonal imagery, “Reg flew off the dirt bike like a carton of eggs,” objectifying Reg and imbuing the accident with a perverse sense of mundane worthlessness, as if Reg thought himself not worth protecting. The final verse from Gabe Nandez mirrors these same ideas of detachment featuring simple imagery and rhyme scheme, “No collar on my neck, no secret/Kamikaze jets, no leashes/Domino effect, no sequence/Holla at me man, no meekness.” The final sample of the track features an exchange from Kongi’s Harvest between the nephew of Oba Danlola, Daodu, and his lover Segi. Segi questions whether Daodu, the heir apparent, is becoming corrupted by the promise of political power by asking whether kingship has gotten into his blood. Daodu wryly responds, “I haven’t noticed it when I bleed.”

The following track, “Doldrums,” features a reprieve from the emotional performances that have so far comprised the tracklist. This is not to say that this track is without substance, however: it features a spare and meandering instrumental that reflects the titles. This stasis is further driven home by dispassionate imagery, “Bullets cuttin’ through dead air lookin’ for victims” and dread before being caught unawares in the pitfalls of modern society, “Time ran down on us like the first of the month, and dumped/Caught him lackin’, wakin’ up on a park bench a bum.”

“NYNEX” follows as another outstanding group cut with features from Armand Hammer collaborator E L U C I D, Denmark Vessey, and Quelle Chris. In the opening verse, woods delivers another highlight verse deeming modern technological progress as subordinate to lasting social change, “Quinine powder and alcohol, stir until dissolved/The future isn’t flying cars, it’s Rachel Dolezal absolved.” As the verse progresses, woods also questions whether it is worth bringing children into the world when it is still governed by such oppressive institutions, “Translucent man-of-war, the tentacles caress my paramour/Implored the bitch to be sensible/The slave master’s children all looked identical/True, the future is children, but whatever future you buildin’ already look miserable.” As the verse ends, Preservation’s drums kick in with an infectious harmonica loop as the featured artists take turns stepping up for their verses. First, E L U C I D enters with a meditation on how the proper way to live is somewhere between myth and the profane, “I do a dance from’86, I’m a simple machine/Hammering the myth, pullin’ it from the extreme/The only answer sits, sits right in between.” Denmark Vessey writes about how systemic oppression and its pressures can breed new avenues to success, “Medu Neter in a love letter/Dove tears in the inkwell for a dove feather/I make a dovetail when I spread the bills, blood money… I prefer my bluntin’ smothered in addiction/Subjugation is the mother of invention.” Finally, Quelle Chris enters with a similar idea on how artists desperately try to break into the mainstream and leave their mark, “E’rybody wanna be the next big thing to pop out Mother Nature’s gato breathin’/Spells, chants, incantations, readings…N***** thought we was writin’ raps and we manipulate seasons/That’s no cap and all caps at the same time.” Quelle Chris’ smug exit is also worth mentioning, rapping knowingly that he and his collaborators just delivered one of the best tracks on this album with “Sidesteppin’ like it’s hammer time/Deep cut so fire that it cauterizes.”

The second half of Aethiopes begins with “Christine,” whose title refers to the eponymous Stephen King novel about a haunted and homicidal car. woods’ raps follow in the spirit of King’s novel, likening cars to coffins and harbingers of death. He begins by drawing from his own life, referencing the death of his father in a car accident, “Black car on a backstreet, little me asleep on the back seat/Lulled by street lamps and the blackness in between/My parents’ argument picking up speed/In and out of bad dreams/That’s what they said when she saw him dead in the road.” woods then goes on to detail the ways cars relate to death such as in accidents, rides to the police station, or when unfortunate souls are simply shot outside their own vehicles, “Some went through the windshield, some went to the precinct/Some got yapped out driver’s seats in parking lots and left bleedin’.” The linkage of cars to death is further explored in the chorus, which is directly interpolated from the song “Mr. Brown” by Glen Adams. This song, popularized by Bob Marley, portrays Jamaican urban legend in which a demon named Mr. Brown travels in a three-wheeled coffin. woods’ second verse takes another view, this time exploring the effect on those left behind after such tragedy, “They lookin’ for the vehicle/Took the plates off, put it in his Granny back yard… He got killed, it was still there for a year or two/I’d seen it drivin’ through/Granny on the stoop, she never waved back.” The track closes with a transitionary verse from Mike Ladd, who employs woods’ atemporal style with equal expertise, “Three heads on a jackal, fantastic creatures in Africa/Universalis Cosmographia/Sebastian Münster, lying bastard/Wolfman in a Speedo, Cyclops and Chest Master.” The production on this verse also merits special attention. First, the drums come in partway through the verse on the line “Break the bank like Musa, mint the gold, truth aplenty,” energizing the verse and presaging the more aggressive nature of the following track. Then, as the music moves into the next track, Mike Ladd finishes his reminiscence on his childhood by wistfully remarking, “I was twelve years old, still could have gone ofay/So bless that day,” before spitting out, “And damn the last three centuries.”

As Mike Ladd reaches the word “centuries,” “Heavy Water” begins. Another posse cut featuring Breeze Brewin and El-P, this is my favorite track on the album. Featuring a masterful collage of drones, percussion, and scratches, woods and his collaborators burn through no fewer than six verses in two and a half minutes. Breeze Brewin begins, a slight edge of distortion added to his menacing monotone, “Time to be bold, screamin’ in a demon creole/Knowin’ that the native is the way to see our people/As if through a peephole.” woods follows quickly, declaring both his skill as a rapper and as a curator of the Backwoodz label as he assumes the persona of a herald of disaster, “Multiverse Benzino/Rode back on a black pegasus/Medusa’s head in a sack/Senegalese twists snakin’ out the bag/I come bearing gifts, rats, fleas, cave bats, black exorcist.” El-P piggybacks off woods’ final line “A HEPA filter glove box, brand new offline computers” with “Simulation rebooters/New version, I’m gunnin’ for light, the void’s useless/It’s all a stab in the back, et tu Brute-ers/Brutalist blue boys movin’, they shootin’/Nothin’ new, Google ‘Chrome’ if confusin’.” All three vocalists then give a second verse, which end with woods’ final lines referencing the theft of indigenous artifacts by colonial powers, “Ashanti gold on Queen Elizabeth’s neck/Scarification across both breasts.” The drums then fade away into a simple guitar line, keeping the same tempo before transitioning into “Haarlem.”

Much like the titles Aethiopes and “Sauvage,” “Haarlem” is an example of European terminology relating to African concepts. This particular instance links Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands, with the phonetically identical Harlem neighborhood in New York City. woods’ verse begins with references to Western attempts to simplify African culture, the works of Chinua Achebe, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, “King of all blacks, I eat human hearts/I let things fall apart, motorcars rustin’ in the garage/Granadillas wild in the yard, vines climbin’, burglar barred/The roof fell in, on gods it’s full of stars.” It is also worth noting a potential callback, as the crumbling structure referenced in the quoted passage could be his neighbor’s home in “Asylum.” This lends further credence to the interpretation of Aethiopes as a study of the degeneration of African culture under the oppression and substitution of European values. Midway through the song, it transitions using another sample from Kongi’s Harvest. This sample is taken from the final moments of the film, as the new head of state of the Republic of Isma repeats the same totalitarian mantras as his predecessor, “The will of the state is supreme. Destiny has entrusted in our hands the will of the state.” The following instrumental is lifted directly from the credits of Kongi’s Harvest, and the jagged piano lines serve as an effective backdrop for another verse from woods and a demented vocal performance from Fatboi Sharif. The track ends with another sample from Kongi’s Harvest, this time an exchange between the titular Kongi, the tyrannical head of state, and his secretary regarding the presence of a photographer. This exchange echoes woods’ well-known reservations of being photographed to protect his privacy, “I don’t like being photographed! It would be a most unwarrantable intrusion.”

“Versailles” singles out capitalism as a system of oppression. Within woods’ verse, he simultaneously calls back to previous tracks and implicates the work of Mark Twain, specifically The Prince and the Pauper as a parable for materialist pursuits, “Paper chasing, it’s hard to stay on the same page/’No hard feelings’ the turn of phrase, Twain adapted for the stage.” Featured artist Despot also steps up, taking the perspective of a ruthless opportunist, “Keep your mind off what is mine or you’ll be smilin’ on a shirt/It ain’t ever over ‘cause the fat lady forgot the words/Rain or sleet or famine and disease, I’m in the streets steppin’/With a reason, somebody deceased dangling from each necklace.”

“Protoevangelium” is a complex track furthering woods’ criticism of capitalism and opportunism found in “No Hard Feelings” and “Versailles.” In the first verse, woods reflects on the opportunities he encountered in life and his discomfort in taking them while others remain less fortunate, “Life gave me lemonade, I pour in my spirit of choice/The trees weapons grade, it’s not that I’m ‘noid/UN inspectors upstairs, I’m tryin’ not to make a noise/Wave one hand like, ‘All that gotta get destroyed.’” He also comments on the nature of the rap industry, noting the tendency to pursue material goals without furthering more important social causes, “The game thick with con artists and hucksters/Flip a cardboard box, three-card monte social justice/That’s a no for me beloved and the rhymes are mostly rubbish/I get it/Tryna pay the rent, but that’s not Black empowerment.” Featured artist Shinehead then takes over for the bridge, questioning whether there is an end in the pursuit of wealth, “Now you get what you want, do you want more?” In woods’ second verse, he imagines the possibilities he could be afforded upon his death, “I came to the end or at least my finish and they said three wishes/It was dark, but I could see a fire in the distance.” For his first two wishes, woods chooses to rectify mistakes from his past, “That night in Chinatown we got in the party, I still don’t know how/Smokin’ cigars across from Dr. J, mine was full of haze… Oh the things we shoulda did,” and to spend more time with his family, “Give me a Thanksgiving while we all still lived/Auntie Carmen’s cornbread, I cooked the bird, carved the pig/Renell said bow our heads and Auntie Umi winked.” However, we are not told to his third wish: “And for the last I paused, lookin’ back at the road I walked/They said come now, it’s one more.”

Following a fading outro, a solitary wavering synth sampled from Czesław Niemen’s “Dziwny jest ten świat” ushers in “Remorseless.” This track sees woods taking a more detached perspective and doing his best to look at the entirety of the bleak subject matter he has been covering from an externalized point of view. At the same time, he expounds further on the materialism found in the rap game and criticizes the notion of generational wealth on the grounds that it divorces the recipients from the struggle it took to obtain that wealth, “In person, these rappers’ watches look temptin’/The chain say envy, but PTSD keep me countin’, never spendin’… I’m not concerned with generational wealth, that’s its own curse/Anything you want on this cursed Earth/Probably better off gettin’ it yourself, see what it’s worth.” After a brief instrumental break, woods dives back in, this time detailing the loss of a lover and how he still holds on to one of her possessions, “The photograph of young Tutankhamun/Spaghetti links tangled like ramen/Everything behind the mask rotten/I tell people I keep it so you not forgotten, but that’s cap/I thought pillars of salt, but she too smart for lookin’ back.” As the track ends, woods reinforces his detached perspective and dismisses discourse on classism from those who haven’t experienced its evils firsthand, “Spare me the Hallmark Karl Marx/I was in the Dollar Tree break room playin’ cards with quarters/Stop loss posters on the wall, brick and mortar/I watched the planet from orbit, remorseless.” The following outro features one final sample from Kongi’s Harvest in which governmental decrees are read out that replace earlier ones. This implies that as quickly as progress seems to be made, it is swept aside and replaced with alternative means of subjugation.

On the final track, “Smith + Cross,” woods comes crashing back down to earth. After having spent the last forty minutes examining the perpetuation of oppression, woods’ pain is palpable. The instrumental is eerily smooth, reflecting the numbness experienced when fully comprehending the generational trauma suffered by African people and their descendants. Here at the end, woods paints us with a final, harrowing image: “Fire in the cane fields, generational trauma/At the museum, eyes glassy from the pain pills/Me and her in the diorama.”

With Aethiopes, woods does not offer a way forward. There are glimmers of a brighter future in earlier tracks, but as the music fades we are left with a forlorn refrain: “Sugar, molasses, rum/Sun blasted bastard’s son/Some laughed, some slumped aghast at what we’d done.” woods delivers this mantra repeatedly, as if struggling to stay aware of this epiphany without letting its urgency fade. He knows full well that the antiquated systems of slavery and colonialism were only the beginning: his atemporal style and references to current topics of late-stage capitalism and police brutality show the continuation of systemic oppression. In turn, these systems are perpetuated by the same objectification and depersonalization that deprived the African people of themselves centuries ago. Despite its lack of answers, Aethiopes’ incisive commentary on the continued presence of oppression and the loss of cultural identity ensures that no listener emerges unscathed.

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Favorite Lyrics:

“Not sure what I’m looking for, but I’ll know when I find/My mother sent the gardener to look for me, but the sky is a great place to hide.” – “Asylum”

“Dug down in my soul and did some soul searchin’/All I found was a police report for a missin’ person.” – Boldy James, “Sauvage”

“Reg flew off the dirt bike like a carton of eggs/Came back stutterin’ with a limp and a dent in his head.” – “Sauvage”

“Some n***** run when they see n***** runnin’/Some n***** run and see/I be the latter.” – Quelle Chris, “NYNEX”

“Deep cut so fire that it cauterizes.” – Quelle Chris, “NYNEX”

“I was twelve years old, still could have gone ofay/So bless that day/And damn the last three centuries.” – Mike Ladd, “Christine”

“Time to be bold, screamin’ in a demon creole/Knowin’ that the native is the way to see our people/As if through a peephole.” – Breeze Brewin, “Heavy Water”

“The gorilla severed every inoculated limb, left ’em with stubs/Ziggurats on the Nile, bought the house and tore it down/All your yesterdays in one neat pile.” – “Haarlem”

“I’m not concerned with generational wealth, that’s its own curse/Anything you want on this cursed Earth/Probably better off gettin’ it yourself, see what it’s worth.” – “Remorseless”

“Spare me the Hallmark Karl Marx/I was in the Dollar Tree break room playin’ cards with quarters/Stop loss posters on the wall, brick and mortar/I watched the planet from orbit, remorseless.” – “Remorseless”

“Fire in the cane fields, generational trauma/At the museum, eyes glassy from the pain pills/Me and her in the diorama.” – “Smith + Cross”

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Talking Points:

With woods’ role as the founder of Backwoodz Studios, do you see him continuing to release music indefinitely, or eventually settling into a “curator” role similar to Westside Gunn and Griselda Records? In my view, Aethiopes gives incisive observations on oppression but does not offer much in the way of potential paths forward. Do you think such a path exists? If so, would you expect woods to explore his own ideas regarding social progress in future projects or continue offering critiques of modern society? billy woods has multiple projects in his discography where he collaborates with only one producer. What producer(s) would you like to see him work with in the future?