For billy woods, literate rhymes and inventive flows are littered through all his works. So much so, it’s hard to pinpoint his exact genre. But for the New York-based rapper, his music career began in the early 2000s, however, he was largely unknown until 2012 after the release of his solo album History Will Absolve Me. Since then, woods has gone onto release music under Armand Hammer – a collaborative project with ELUCID – and an array of solo albums like Today, I Wrote Nothing (2015), Maps (2023) and more.
His latest solo release – the 2025 album GOLLIWOG – has been deemed his most experimental yet. So much so, Pitchforkdescribed it as “a twisty horrorcore masterpiece where history and nightmares are indistinguishable” and a “perfect showcase for his craft”. It mixes horror, humour, surrealism and Afropessimism into the one work: think African zombies, time traveling trap cars, malevolent ragdolls and a dying Frantz Fanon