Album Review: Golliwog by billy woods

Drawing on a story he first penned at nine, billy woods transforms a dismissed childhood tale into an 18-track quest of dark humor, surreal narratives, and groundbreaking production.

Courtesy of Backwoodz Studioz.

billy woods introduced Golliwog with the kind of wicked grin that fans have come to expect. He’s recalling the short story he wrote at nine about “an evil golliwog” that his mother dismissed as derivative. Three decades later, he rewrote the idea as a full-length carnival of nightmares and described the record as “horror, humor, surrealism, and Afropessimism in the same crooked mirror.” The title nods to the racist ragdoll caricature, but woods flips the image into a trickster mask; across eighteen tracks, he drags it through colonial history, amusement-park kitsch, and end-times Black prophecy until only the stuffing is left. Backwoodz Studioz one-sheet promises “African zombies, time-traveling trap cars, malevolent ragdolls and a dying Frantz Fanon all sharing the same muddy midway.”

Sessions sprawled across 2024 into early 2025 and read like a who’s-who of underground production. The core coils around Kenny Segal, Steel Tipped Dove, and Preservation, yet woods widened the lens to include the Alchemist, Conductor Williams, El-P, Messiah Musik, DJ Haram, Shabaka Hutchings, and Ant from Atmosphere, with Willie Green supervising the final mix at GreenHouse. Backwoodz labelmates ELUCID and Cavalier trade verses with Despot, Bruiser Wolf, Al.Divino and singer Yolanda Watson, while LA’s experimental jazz trio Human Error Club slip reeds and feedback under the floorboards. The liner credits note that every song was built on live stems first—horns, double bass, taped noise before the producers carved them into the claustrophobic vignettes woods favors, a workflow that helps the album feel less like a beat tape and more like a single, constantly shifting score.

The rollout began with “Misery,” a two-minute jolt over Kenny Segal’s warped Rhodes and brushed-snare loops. woods flicks from Stephen King references—“hobbling fans with the sledge” is an early punch line—to MF DOOM’s “Gas Drawls” callbacks (“I re-up on bad dreams, bag up screams in fifties”) before flattening the hook into a whisper that sounds recorded through head-wrap gauze. From there, the verse becomes an erotic fever dream: the narrator is seduced by a woman who “got a lover and a husband… got a summons for sex in public and laugh tellin’ the story.” Horror, lust, and slapstick tumble over one another: King’s Misery collides with Cinderella (“she not goin’ home in a pumpkin”) and the New York City subway crawl (“all eight stops on the ACE”) to build an urban gothic where romance is always one breath away from obsession. The single doubled as a pre-order trigger to kick off the rollout, delivering the track and revealing a provisional sequence that opens with “Jumpscare” and “STAR87.”

Four weeks later, woods resurfaced with “BLK ZMBY.” Steel Tipped Dove supplies a deranged calliope melody, but the real introduction is a sampled press-conference quip from Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni that frames woods’ coming verse as a dialogue with post-colonial power itself. What follows is a panoramic, gore-splattered satire: “Staggerin’ post-colonial African zombie state chase the people into the waves/Watch every ship and raft ‘til they disappear.” Refugee crises, resource extraction, and kleptocratic excess collapse into one walking-dead image; the undead elites “roam in Ferragamo and Comme des Garçons,” toast with Moët as the poor drown, then stash “Pan-African money folder, Arab money, Jew money… keep everything in USD ’cause we really know them.” “Counterclockwise” loops vintage Alchemist atmospheric sounds until woods snarls, “History spun backwards, toppled statues we ain’t built yet,” while the centerpiece “Corinthians” reunites Despot (bodies his feature) and EL-P (as the producer) for a three-way sermon on imperial rot.

Even some of the songs feel cinematic. “Jumpscare” widens Preservation’s violin shrieks until the beat collapses under its own feedback, allowing woods to spit parables about colonial museum theft; “STAR87,” driven by Conductor Williams chipmunk-soul, reads like a late-night car chase narrated by Frantz Fanon’s ghost. Elsewhere, track titles alone sketch scenes: “A Doll Fulla Pins” pairs Yolanda Watson’s alto with field-recorded creaks, “Lead Paint Test” drags the carnival out of town on rusty calliope pipes with ELUCID and Cavalier providing spectacular verses, and closer “Dislocated” dissolves woods’ voice into Human Error Club’s smoldering reeds. Everything is threaded with the album’s guiding image of the golliwog turned trickster mask—sometimes a vessel for woods’ deadpan jokes, sometimes a vessel for modern-day terror.

But “Waterproof Mascara” has woods over Preservation soundscapes that deal with family dynamics, trust, and the harsh realities of life. “Careful what you wish for, might just get that shit” highlight the unpredictability of life and the consequences that come with it. The juxtaposition of somber tones with moments of intensity mirrors the emotional rollercoaster depicted in the rhymes. His storytelling is raw and unfiltered, offering a glimpse into the darker aspects of existence. Outside of “Misery” and “Pitchfork & Halos,” Kenny Segal also provides his haunting and minimalist beat for “Born Alone” that helps paint a picture of woods’ struggle and personal introspection, using metaphors and anecdotes to convey his message: “Dead man’s shoes, double dare you to rock ‘em.” Born alone, die alone.

Backwoodz’ pitch likens Golliwog to “a black carnival pitched in a muddy field overnight, empty rides whirring in the dark,” and the record’s early fragments bear that out: rides and mirrors, shrieks and brass, hooks that blink off mid-syllable. There is no talk of absolution—just survival through sharp teeth and sharper wit. From the lead single’s claustrophobic two minutes to the undead march of “BLK ZMBY,” woods seems intent on proving that horror and history are often the same story told under different lighting. The midway lights are almost on, with the full set of eighteen rides unlocking tomorrow. All that’s left is to step inside and let the mirrors decide who’s really wearing the mask.

Standout (★★★★½)

Favorite Track(s): “Waterproof Mascara,” “Corinthians,” “A Doll Full of Pins,” “Lead Paint Test”