Maps

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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. 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. Maps is the new album from NYC rapper billy woods and LA producer Kenny Segal, their first full collaboration since 2019’s Hiding Places. Four years after that landmark record, the duo have reunited with a vengeance. Maps is a story of the road, or roads, taken and untaken; of living the dream and dreaming of another life. It is an album about trying to find your way home, after making your home wherever you lay your head.

On his own, Woods is relentless. ‘The Layover’ riffs on Anthony Bourdain and grave-robbing while sneaking in his album titles (“Before History I made fire in a cave”). You can feel your synapses firing with each uncovered connection. This was another that I heard at Bond’s crib. Man, Matthew is crazy. It’s the rawest, in all senses of the word, Kool Keith album. I think it’s mostly self-produced, and he’s just going off and ranting with an unhinged rawness. It was great to listen to, and it was like alright, so you can just write and make your own rules. 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.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. Is that stylistic shift for the best? That’s tough to say - I like Maps, but it’s probably the least compelling woods has sounded to me, at least within the last five years. Is that because this album is one of the rapper’s most palatable and least challenging listens, or is it because of something else entirely? On paper, I like the idea of getting to hear him relent a little bit from the near-constant angst and anxiety that typifies most of his work, and Segal, one of the most talented (as well as underrated) producers working today, seems like the right guy to help facilitate that shift. But in practice, I feel that Maps sounds somewhat like billy woods fighting a lot of his natural creative instincts simply because he knows he can’t remake Aethiopes or Hiding Places and continue to be on the cutting edge of where hip hop is moving. Year Zero tiene un feat bastante esperado de Danny Brown, sinceramente no me gusto, un beat que no me convence, no es de mi gusto, respeto al tema pero no es de mi tipo.

With The Records That Made Me, VF uncovers the vinyl releases that have influenced and shaped our favourite musicians, DJs and artists. 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. 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.The Layover me parece uno de los temas infravalorados del disco, un beat bastante elegante con un piano suave y simple pero que junto a unas baterías dusty crean una atmósfera bastante descafeinada y temple del estilo 'Griselda', buen rapeo de Woods y en general un tema con muchas vibes. FaceTime es el último tema que analizaré, tema con un beat bastante puro y existencial, me gusta mucho el flow de Billy en este tema y el coro Samuel T. Herring es muy bueno. I first encountered this record in college when I met this kid from New York, who was into underground hip hop and was one of the first people I knew who really had rap vinyl. I’d never heard of them and when it was played for me, I was just blown away. I had some exposure to the underground hip-hop scene after coming to New York, but I wasn’t plugged in at all and they didn’t have a scene like that where I was coming from. Babylon By Bus es probablemente mi tema favorito del álbum, un tema de boom bap rudo que tiene una evolución en el beat cabrona, que pedazo de instrumental de Kenny Segal, primero vemos esta atmósfera tétrica con una batería sucia donde Woods te hipnotiza con su delivery monótono y luego llegamos al mejor feat del proyecto, ShrapKnel, escupe las barras de una manera directa y conduntente, por último evoluciona a un beat mas grandioso y celestial, brutal tema. 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.