Album Review: billy woods, Kenny Segal - Hiding Places
Any album involving the abstract and intricate rapper billy woods cannot simply be understood after one listen, and for this reason his lack of mainstream success is painfully apparent. Even after multiple attempts, both casual and attentive, to understand what he is getting at on the twelve tracks which make up his newest album, any concrete meaning is still difficult to grasp. After last year's Paraffin (the second collaboration with rapper Elucid under the name Armand Hammer), a political and melancholic odyssey that dragged even more than billy woods' dense style would suggest, the decision to work with producer Kenny Segal is a much appreciated one. The blend of challenging verses with inventive, energetic production lends Hiding Places a vigor not present on the rapper's other work, and even those with little patience for obscure rapping will likely find enjoyment in such creative instrumentals.
Regardless of how explicit billy woods is with his messages, the feelings of unease and dread are constant in all his work, with Hiding Places conforming quite well to both those themes as well as a slightly disturbing twist on the arrogance endemic in hip-hop. steak knives frames murder as an unremarkable event for the rapper, but it's his undeniable flow when spitting "I shoot you in the street, be home for breakfast/Yes, it's sick but banalities might as well be death threats/Let it sit, there's the threat of sepsis" that keeps his fans attentive to an artist so obtuse. Politics and injustice are recurring themes in his work, and this record is no exception: bigfakelaugh opens with references to segregation and similarly evil practices ("No n-words, no Irish/Shopkeeper pointin' to the signage/Work sets you free on the gate, to the gate") before moving on to health insurance and pointed lines about the downtrodden workers of America: "You can't eat pride (You can try)".
Perhaps the most accessible idea presented on this record is that which graces it cover: the dilapidated house, a symbol both of an upbringing in poverty and of an unexplored labyrinth, wherein every unopened door or hidden passage is enticing and treacherous. The latter is the focus of spider hole, whose title seems to allude, appropriately, to a hiding place from outside trauma, notable lines including "It's just me in the spider hole, that's the best part/From here, the war seem really far, the mirror was as sharp" and "Holdin' my breath in the crawl space, weight taped to my body/Barbarians at the gate, Benghazi". crawlspace is analogous in its metaphors ("Abandoned mansion, squat in basement apartment") amidst politically charged bars referencing Donald Trump, Donald Glover, Ronald Reagan, and Islamophobia. "Pace the palace wing, dethroned king jump when the phone ring" recreates the image of a sprawling, empty dwelling on checkpoints, simultaneously a clever nod to Martin Luther King, Jr. who shows up in the following verse being wiretapped by the FBI.
The previously mentioned production, for all of billy woods' flow and lyricism, is often the clear highlight, from the muted piano loops of checkpoints and red dust to the eerie, booming bass on bigfakelaugh. Kenny Segal submerges each beat in its own clever melodies and ambiance, the relentless static and dry percussion effectively supplementing the run-down, grimy vibe inherent in billy woods' raspy drawl. When so much of the rapper's work is weighed down by a reliance on dour moodiness, that the instrumentals here are so much more dynamic while still feeling serious and uneasy is a welcome change.
Given the careful listening required to even come close to an understanding of what billy woods intends to communicate, the production here goes a long way to providing the foothold needed to make such an effort enjoyable. Even when the beat is so off-the-wall as to distract from the difficult rapping style, as on the sample-heavy bedtime, the slight dip in quality is brief and hardly noticeable. Much greater of a hindrance is billy woods' eccentric rapping style, which for all its depth and double entendres occasionally veers so far off course it is hard to imagine any hidden meaning could justify it; despite Self-Jupiter's mediocre feature, the guitar shredding on speak gently is ruined mostly by billy woods' meandering, spoken-word outro about people not forwarding their mail.
Listening to a billy woods project is best described as a calculus of effort; will there be enough hidden worth in his words to make the time spent worthwhile? Luckily, Hiding Places is for the most part free from the depressingly plain production that makes certain projects such a struggle to get through, and thus the words within are much less of a chore to try and understand. Still, perhaps even this is too harsh of an appraisal; it is clear with even a cursory glance that billy woods puts a great deal of effort into his bars, and thus it is almost rude to write his words off as 'not worth one's time'. In any case, this album is a powerful demonstration of the rapper's talent, and a particularly worthy addition to his canon.
8/10
Favourite Tracks: checkpoints, crawlspace, red dust
https://open.spotify.com/album/0HmKhR7Umt3ACs52ZLnKyK?si=2lsaSxEmT9SuxDH8JynUcA