Maps

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With The Records That Made Me, VF uncovers the vinyl releases that have influenced and shaped our favourite musicians, DJs and artists. woods’ record selections predominantly reflect a transformative era in underground hip-hop which influenced his artistic growth, ranging from the initial inspiration of The Juggaknots to the euphoria of hearing his friend in Cannibal Ox on vinyl. Even to this day, he continues to derive joy from the vinyl releases of his own music. “Before you even hear your record, it’s amazing just holding it in your hands and being like ‘wow’,” he enthuses. woods’ latest project, Maps, marks his second collaborative album with producer Kenny Segal and is a standout release of the year so far. VF’s Kelly Doherty caught up with woods to delve into the records that have played a significant role in shaping and inspiring his music. It bridged the era of underground hip hop I was first introduced to in 1996 when I heard “Clear Blue Skies”. Meeting Vordul and knowing someone who rapped and was an incredible prodigy – suddenly five years later it had all come together. It made it all real that I could try to do this.

billy woods has been on a tear. Ever since becoming one of the internet’s favourite rappers over the course of the 2020s, the New York City-based musician has seemed intent on rewriting the rules of hip hop on each of his successive releases. It’s no different on Maps, the second full album-length collaboration between woods and Los Angeles’ Kenny Segal, which finds both artists exploring new avenues and coming to radically different ends than they did on 2019’s Hiding Places. Stylistically, woods is probably best known as a guy who shoots significantly left of hip hop’s centre, and all his highest-profile work tends to be somewhat difficult for the average listener to get into. But Maps is a little bit of a different thing, and right off the bat, its most salient feature is just how much easier on the uninitiated it tends to be than most of woods’ music. There’s less direct confrontation with the listener here, traded in for warmer and less abrasive instrumentals more tied to a classic East Coast sound, as well as to the rapper’s earliest releases. Maps is a giant transitional space for Billy and Kenny. Envisioned more or less like a travel log of thoughts and experiences from tours and trips and you know, this album seems like a big collection of vignettes at first. Kenny is giving Billy some surprisingly normal yet intensely detailed and textured jazzy production to hop on, and then he does just that, in his usual fashion. Yet, something is different here, no? Billy is in conversational mode on here, way more than he usually is, and it is, indeed, about the uncomfortable sensations around transitional spaces. As he weaves together his usual snappy bars, he is putting himself way more out in the open, quite in the vein of Church, but as that album looked inwards, Maps looks more outside of that. It's an album about questioning yourself, asking yourself what your humanity even means to other people, how much expectations can poison your mind, how you reflect upon change in yourself while asking if this is where you wanted to go. How much your home feels like your home after you've been gone for so long, especially if the next trip is right ahead of you, the airport gates you spent hours sitting in watching other people going through the same transitional spaces as you. You all want to get there, but you are not there yet. Although Company Flow’s Funcrusher Plus was a hugely formative album for me too, I’m going to say this release because we’re talking about vinyl. Siguen y no paran. Cada álbum que lanza billy woods me hace pensar que es el mejor rapero de la década de los 20's. Aethiopes, Haram, Church, WBDTS y Maps son álbumes notables, ninguno baja del 7, este tipo puede ser para gente 'edgy' o al tipo de persona que le gusta el hip hop abstracto con diferentes significados pero sinceramente, se quedan cortos los adjetivos para calificar los trabajos de este hombre, rapero de culto, producción excelente, rimas contundentes y mucho significado literario y lírico, que mas le vas a pedir? billy woods’ journey with vinyl began tentatively during a youth dominated by cassettes and CDs. “When I was a teen getting into music on my own, vinyl was kind of out,” he explains. During time spent in Zimbabwe as a child, woods had access to records and a turntable, but upon returning to the US, he no longer had a working turntable at home.Others, like “Year Zero,” which features a stunning Danny Brown verse, are spartan voids of creaky percussion and eerie synths that play up woods’ wry prophesizing. The globetrotting beats of Maps might initially scan as more conservative than the abrasive and experimental soundscape of Hiding Places, but the variety is forward-thinking. Segal understands that woods, who has gained a reputation as a doomsayer, is at his core an explorer. His beats push woods into new sonic and narrative spaces. Around that time, someone had the single “Must Be Bobby” on vinyl. It also had the instrumental version, and it was really dope. I just would put that on and write to it–putting in my 10,000 hours or whatever. Eventually, that led to me copping the album. Blue Smoke es uno de los temas con el beat mas wtf que he escuchado este año, beat de free-jazz con cuerdas super efímeras donde sinceramente Billy Woods rompe la pista, chefkiss para Kenny Segal, beat brutal de free-jazz donde Woods flota, tema de minuto y medio apenas apetecible y excelente, sorprendente. Bad Dreams Are Only Dreams es otro tema con una influencia muy jazzera, tema de un minuto bastante corto y que juega con la abstracción del tiempo, parece más largo de lo que suena, estrofa corta pero compleja y buena de Woods.

Single ‘FaceTime’ with Sam T. Herring underlines Woods as one of rap’s great storytellers. On it, he grumbles through a hotel lobby, thinking of home. Spoilt rich-kid festival-goers spill out of the hallways while he waits for his phone to ping. Then there’s ‘Hangman’, a painting of dread that digs into what stops him from getting comfortable with success: “any day could be the day they frog-march you in manacles.” He recalls meeting photographer and collaborator Alexander Richter thanks to mutual love of a record. “He was listening to Jeru The Damaja’s “Come Clean” single on vinyl with his window open on campus,” woods says. Exchanges like this with friends shaped many of his early vinyl experiences. “I don’t think there’s a single record on this list that I had first”.

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In billy woods’ music, personal history is global history. There’s a recurring figure in his songs: the Average Joe thrust onto the world stage and forced to select from a menu of bad choices. “It ain’t no compromise, I’m Ho Chi Minh, ruthless, MC Ren/Small caliber, close range, General Nguyen,” he rapped on 2012’s “ The Foreigner,” likening a petty street beef to the Vietnam War. Alone and as one half of Armand Hammer, he’s turned such juxtapositions into a mad and beautiful science. His unorthodox rhymes hit like jet lag, scrambling the body’s sense of time and space. Soft Landing es una intro bastante bien, con una batería bastante nublada, no se da nada de énfasis a los drums en este tema, me encanta la vibra de este tema, muy cálida y acuática, siento como si estuviera enfrente de un mar lleno de olas grandes chocando contra rocas, Woods navega el beat como un pirata, añadir que me gusta ese guiño e interpolación a Nina Simone en el coro, producción existencial e atmosférica, gran inicio. I was really close friends with Vordul Mega and knew Cannibal Ox. At the same time, EL-P was a pioneering voice that had this legendary record that was never followed up truly, in my mind. With this EP, things went from Vordul being this kid I know that raps and is dope to him signed to Def Jux and introducing me to this other cat and saying we’re going to be Cannibal Ox. It’s familiar territory for an artist who’s ridiculed tasteless wealth and rap gentrification his whole career ( “I don’t wanna go see Nas with an orchestra at Carnegie Hall,” went one chorus from Hiding Places ) . His default mode is world-wise, worn out, and untrusting. But there’s greater clarity to the despair on Maps that makes it an ideal entry point for a complete newcomer. I still have a strong place in my heart for the original one. Although the Sub Verse one is what I think of when I think about the album, my heart is with the original Operation: Doomsday record. It was groundbreaking. It just upended how I thought about rap, and that was when I was pretty set that I was going to do music.