Album Review: billy woods - Terror Management
Given that he already released one ambitious full-length project this year, to so soon get another album from mysterious New York rapper billy woods is startling, to say the least. At the same time, however, the nostalgic, past-focused Hiding Places did in a sense invite the need for a more topical record for woods, especially given the relative dearth of politically aware music in recent years. Despite the 2016 U.S. election assuredly providing the hip-hop world with plenty of ammunition to fuel a plethora of conscious rap records, coherent and extensive political commentary in rap music has been woefully absent in recent memory (aside from the occasional punchline bar at Donald Trump's expense). As someone who has been steadily honing his craft for most of this decade, woods is more than equipped to give his two cents on the modern political reality, and Terror Management is his erratic and eccentric method of doing just that. While its content seems to broadly focus on the growing issue of climate change as its main catalyst (just look at that cover), across an extensive collection of succinct tracks woods delivers, with his usual mix of absurdity and obscurity, a compelling sermon that tackles many of modern society's most pernicious woes.
Take the first track, Marlow, for example; the sheer amount of wordplay to unpack should be frustrating, yet the subtle clues strewn throughout make analyzing its deeper meanings a tantalizing exercise. Opening on a clip of Kurt Vonnegut talking about the classic 'man in a hole' story arc ("Somebody gets into trouble, gets out of it again") underscored by melancholy strings slowly fading in, billy woods enters the album with a definitive and eerie thesis: "World gettin' warmer, we goin' the other way". The track is littered with double entendres detailing climate change and humanity's role in it ("Wonderin' the nerve it take to lay under lurchin' waves", "a sea of mea culpas", "Tidal-ed out the culture, crawled inside"), though what exactly the rapper is hinting at is still up to interpretation. His dour lyrics seem to indicate that woods has a more nihilistic view of the planet's future; the last moments of his verse reference Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, drawing parallels between the grotesque cockroach form of protagonist Gregor Samsa and the monstrous apathy of the average citizen in the face of global warming: "Family's wishing this ugly business was finished/But you laughin' instead, you got plenty of meds/You orderin' movies with the spiney legs splayed, antennas spread".
As personal and nostalgic as billy woods' last album was, Terror Management is a vastly different experience; the social commentary and lower-class ruminations that were a wavering presence on Hiding Places here take center stage, and the shorter song structures gives the rapper much more room to try out different flows and flex his technical abilities. Whether or not you agree with his perspective on Western Education Is Forbidden, one has to respect the audacity of a rapper who can reference Paul Simon, Boko Haram, Miriam Mekeba, and spit out "Shorty cant eat no book, what I told Ta-Nehesi Coates" all in the same verse. Awash in grimy percussion and blaring horn stings, the cryptic and acerbic criticisms of the American education system and the crooning outro provided by FIELDED are both quite powerful. Climate change is still the record's most omnipresent spectre, however; Long Grass finds woods lamenting "Water at your chest, lies at your throat/You gon' see when it at your neck though" and "For God's sake, you best pray to him/You best say to him, you not worried 'bout swimmin'" amidst lyrical nods to both glaciers melting and art deco paintings. As he bounces back and forth between offbeat references and dense metaphors, the only constant is his immutable skill on the mic, his voice a perpetually affecting drawl that portrays both the wisdom of age and the fiery passion of youth.
While billy woods' words obviously provide more than enough material to amuse oneself with for hours, the real reason to savour this album over any of his others is its vast instrumental palette. The shrieking electronics on Birdsong do sound oddly like bird calls, an experimental choice that comes off as spastic as the rapper's obscure allusions: "Came in Birdsong's dice game early, thinkin'/And grabbed the motherfuckin' hand like Kunstler v Dershowitz". Halfway through, the track shifts to classic boom-bap style production which woods neglects to rap over; in his place, we get a snippet from a forgotten dialogue between writer James Baldwin and poet Nikki Giovanni from back in 1971. Perhaps not hearing the rapper flex his talents over such an old school beat is disappointing, but it's almost worth it just to hear Giovanni speak on the nature of lying and romanticism; the very next cut Great Fires is obsessed with the same topics, as woods seems to reference his divorce in his poetic verses: "White knuckle, black chuckle, don't talk about love/It's a hell of a drug/I remember how she waited for me to say it/Breath baited, we was on the phone".
Many of the album's later cuts employ similarly startling instrumental turns, and while a number of them end up as either forgettable or regrettable, the standout moments offer some of billy woods' best material yet. gas leak opens on a subdued, ambient beat before suddenly bursting into a violent collision of monstrous percussion and aberrant synth screeching; as woods reenters with a nod to Public Enemy's iconic Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos, the track attempts to return to its earlier muted vibe, but the burst of instrumental emotion hangs over the rapper's words like a fog. Arguably even more sinister is the bass-heavy Trivial Pursuit, its droning synth notes a stark contrast to woods' tale of getting recognized by his voice by a white fan at the butcher, then quipping "I forgot white people is born police". Despite this album finding woods at his most cynical, there is still an appreciable level of hilarity to be found in his lyrics, even if the humour is merely his gut response to, as Pitchfork so eloquently put it in their review, 'the absurdities of the late capitalistic hellscape'.
After all is said and done, the clearest piece of insight that can be gleamed from Terror Management is right there in the record's title. As the impending climate apocalypse accelerates toward us at a rapid pace, those who are understandably worried about humanity's future have to deal with both a growing movement to prop up ignorance in the face of this crisis and the inevitable decay of democratic capitalism as it attempts to try and solve a problem it is completely unequipped to deal with. In the meantime, if making music is billy woods' way of managing his terror, at least his efforts to do so resulted in yet another stellar album from one of the decade's most underrated rappers, despite the regrettable circumstances motivating its release. Even if all one can do is scream to the heavens (or into a microphone) that this situation cannot last, the hope that others will pick up the call and work together to affect real change is enough of a reason to keep trying.
8/10
Favourite Tracks: Marlow, Long Grass, Birdsong