by Taylor Ruckle (@TaylorRuckle)
Not for the first time, New York City rapper billy woods has come unstuck in time. On his latest record, Aethiopes, the flow of events often seems to have halted completely–waiting for a hotel rendezvous that never comes on “No Hard Feelings” or for a favorable wind to blow on “The Doldrums”--but it’s always liable to collapse on itself without warning, and it culminates in woods’ narrator on “Smith + Cross” seeing himself on the other side of the glass in a museum diorama. There, the generational trauma of colonialism and the slave trade telescopes into a present smash-cut with images of sugarcane burning up in a fire on a plantation.
This is an album that defies attempts to pull out isolated thoughts and visuals; to talk about the forbidding Zimbabwean estate woods conjures on “Asylum” is also to talk about the country’s history of European occupation and the references elsewhere on the record to Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey. A full-length collaboration with producer Preservation, who previously worked on a suite from woods’ 2019 record Terror Management, Aethiopes is a vivid post-colonial opus on African-ness–and by extension, European-ness–on the continent and in the Black diaspora. He referred to it in an interview with The FADER as “one of the more complex ideas [he’s] ever tried to tackle.”
That complexity is borne out in forcefully-delivered verses that criss-cross the globe and the time-stream, coating these tracks in references like layers of paint waiting to be peeled back. After the release, woods spoke to Post-Trash to shed some light on the record’s dense imagery, and since Aethiopes is his 10th LP (not counting his releases as a member of Armand Hammer, The Reavers, or Super Chron Flight Brothers) we also discussed its place in the arc of his accomplished career.
"Asylum" opens on this landscape, looking over the fence from the tree–it's such a potent way to open a record that, as a listener, puts you in this headspace of stepping outside your internal life and trying to see what's going on over there. Can you tell me about when you put that track together?
At that point, we had a theme and we had more of a sonic--you know, some of the samples, maybe not obviously, are from Ethiopian origin. Preservation had had a bunch of Ethiopian records he already had been working with, so once the theme started to develop, he said, you know, "I can jump right into that bag." That was one of those songs–he sent it to me, and like always, I listened to it and was trying to think of an idea, and that was the idea that came to me. Some aspects of it are just my real life. that's how that part came about, and then I worked on it really hard. Definitely one of the ones I labored over, although it's a short song.
It's one of those ones where I felt like it could be great if I got it right, and actually, I think it's one of the best songs I've ever made. It has a lot of depth, and like a lot of songs on this album--the term cinematic is overused, but I think that's there. They're very visual. You can taste and smell. It was challenging thinking about doing videos for this album because some of the songs were so specific in what you're seeing that you really have to measure up to that. You can't do a song like "Asylum" and just film yourself rapping, you know? That's not adding anything. In fact, probably distracting.
"Christine" has a cinematic quality, not by accident--a cinematic quality that would be hard to match unless you were doing something to build off those words. It would be difficult if you're a director because it's a very visual album. Visual and visceral is what I would say.
One thing that is so interesting is the way you talk about the passage of time on this record. History is super central in your catalog, and on this record specifically, but also just very concrete images of the way time is moving. Things like the champagne bucket full of melted ice [in “No Hard Feelings”] or the cold fryer full of old grease [in “The Doldrums”] and this sense of time either passing or sort of congealing around you.
I think there's a certain amount of flattening of time in the album in order to get at some of the themes, and then at other times, for other reasons. Like, the song "Christine," the cars in it are stretching over, you know--the narrator, at least, from childhood to some level of adulthood. Then you have a song like "The Doldrums," which is about, yeah, a congealing of time is a good word. "Nothing ever happens 'til it does." You know, "Time ran down on us like the first of the month."
Then at other points, you know, playing with ideas of history and slavery, the variety of experiences within the Black diaspora, and Europe of course is a central player here, in more ways than one. Obviously the title is a European word, and in a lot of ways, Africa itself is a European invention. Nobody in Africa was in Africa–you know, thought of themselves as Africans–until Europeans said that that's what they were. Although at the same time, the duality of things I think is what it is.
But yeah, there is a flattening of time going on, and we move through history at points very rapidly in a verse, where maybe sometimes you stay very specifically in one place. I think that in some ways, that happens in a lot of my work, and I do think that it is pronounced here. You know, even a song like "The Doldrums," you have Yemeni traders off the coast of Mozambique at the same time as you have Black people spilling out of this Yemeni-owned bodega on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn.
There's that synchronicity at work.
Yeah, you have the smoking a Dutch in Amsterdam [in "Haarlem"] on the steps of a mansion built off the things that are talked about earlier in the verse. Even in that song, you have a reference to "Those Were the Days," a song by Mary Hopkin, from 1968. It is itself a remake of a Russian--I don't know if folk song is the correct word. It doesn't really matter, but in terms of the internal thought process, that song is actually sampled by a producer named Bond, who I worked with for most of the first half of my career, on what was one of our more memorable songs on the first album that we ever did together, and my first record.
That was a little easter egg, but it also has a bizarre connection to the 1960s execution of--let's just say political dissidents for now, because I don't remember exactly whether they had plotted a coup or what the thing was, in Equatorial Guinea. The dictator of Equatorial Guinea had these people executed in a stadium, and supposedly they played "Those Were the Days" at the stadium when they executed them. There's a brief snippet of the song that plays when it says "I watched from crumbling balustrades."
[“Haarlem”] also contains--again, people don't have to know this to appreciate the song, but there's also a significant thread, especially early in the song, of oblique references to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which of course is entirely or significantly about the nature of time. The penultimate scene in the movie is when this guy sees into a monolith, and he says "It's all stars." And of course, just the use of the term "alien monolith" to begin with, but you don't need to know about that to get it because the alien monoliths ostensibly being referred to in the verse are European buildings.
"Our mortarless fortresses lie abandoned," like Great Zimbabwe, a structure erected by a civilization that was gone before Europeans had even arrived in Zimbabwe. That's pretty impressive from a technological standpoint because it was built without any concrete or mortar, but it's a significant enclosure that at one time contained what must have been a pretty wealthy settlement, city, whatever. Then it's like, "Our mortarless fortresses lie abandoned / Alien monoliths still standin'...Super Ape, put a candle in a skull for a lantern." Again, a reference--are you familiar with the movie?
I've seen it one time. You know, it's one of those iconic things.
Yeah, so in the beginning of the movie, it sort of attempts to show some sort of play on human society, evolution, violence–the history of the world through this monolith and these apes. In the song:
King of all blacks, I eat human hearts
I let things fall apart, motorcars rustin' in the garage
Granadillas wild in the yard, vines climbin', burglar bars
The roof caved in, on gods it's all stars.
This isn't even the question you asked, but whatever. We're talking about time.
[laughs] Of course!
The beginning is going back to ideas of otherness, but it also deals with–magic and ritual do have a place in traditional African societies, like most societies in the world, and then the idea of cannibalism both as a fear thing and a means of othering, and also the reality of the many cultures in Africa in which cannibalism…I mean, probably there's no human culture in which cannibalism did not play a real or imagined role in ritual, down to Christianity, when you consume the body of Christ. Then of course the idea of, "I let things fall apart." Like, obviously the book Things Fall Apart. Maybe that's not obvious.
Yeah, no, I caught that, and the idea of entropy.
But it's also making that a literal thing. This person has this house and these motorcars--you could even think of it as the house in “Asylum,” right? "I let things fall apart, motorcars rustin' in the garage / Granadillas wild in the yard, vines climbin', burglar bars / the roof caved in, it's full of stars." There's this crumbling house that is grand, or was grand, and at the same time, it's very western. But I've placed it in its place too, because of things like granadillas, and tropical sort of plants. It's a name for passionfruit. That's what we called it in Zimbabwe. Anyway, this house that's collapsing, the sense of entropy, cannibalism, and these western things that have been left, allowed to go to seed. It's taking Things Fall Apart and also making it literal.
"The roof caved in, it's full of stars" is like, literally you're looking up through the roof of a caved-in house at night. It's full of stars, but also a reference to Space Odyssey, the proclamation when the guy sees inside the monolith. "I swam in the dark, the sun fled, the moon large / Fire leaps from Perry's Black Ark." You could look at swimming in the dark as literally swimming at nighttime, or you could look at it as looking up at this night full of stars in this ruined house and swimming in the dark.
"Fire leaps from Perry's Black Ark," fire, and then "Slash and burn, the past is never far." Slash and burn agriculture, you probably know what that is. Pretty common thing in Africa. Then the next line is "Reaching with chopped arms, lopped hands, no spare parts." On the one hand, it's like the past is never far, so reaching for it, but you're also reaching with--"chopped arms, lopped hands" is a reference to the Belgian rubber trade. This was a punishment in slavery in the western world too, but in the Congo Free State run as a personal fiefdom of King Leopold of Belgium, all the native people were forced to go into the jungle and tap rubber trees, and if they failed to reach a certain quota, they would have hands or arms chopped off. It's reaching with these severed limbs for the past, so that has a lot of layers to it, right?
There's generational implications there.
Yeah yeah yeah. Missing pieces, which gives double meaning to the next line. "Reaching with chopped arms, lopped hands, no spare parts." Growing up in Africa, in Zimbabwe, most of the things that you're using as far as machines--cars--come from the west. So depending on the political and economic situation, you could have something wrong with your car and there literally aren't spare parts for it, or people will just complain about the difficulty of finding spare parts, the cost of them, so obviously bending that.
I really think–and maybe I'm only talking about this song 'cause once we got on the subject, I think this is a song worthy of looking at this way. "Reaching with chopped hands, lopped arms, no spare parts," it's working on both of those levels. We live in a world, in an African world that nonetheless is made by Europeans and dependent upon these things that come from the outside, and at the same time, it's like you've lost these things. You've been lopped of your arms and hands trying to reach for this past, and there are not spare parts to replace what's gone. More flattening of time comes in the next line:
"The band played 'Those Were the Days,' I watched 'em hang
I ate red red in the stadium stands
From crumbling balustrades, I watched 'em dance
Like drill rappers."
Obviously it's a reference to this execution. Also, "Those Were the Days," the song itself is about reminiscing, so on and so forth, right? So there's a whole bunch of layers there. Then the song actually plays, and that song is also the song that was sampled on my first album--that totally separate layer that doesn't affect the actual narrative here.
But it's a flattening of your career also, isn't it?
Yeah, I guess you could make that point. That's why they have critics here to correct me and see the things that I can't see.
[laughs]
So you see, "The band played 'Those Were the Days'...I ate red red," a West African dish. Its color is red from palm oil. "I ate red red in the stadium stands / From crumbling balustrades I watched 'em dance." Thinking of people hanging, really. That's the dance, but it could have just as easily been the band. But the crumbling balustrades, again, keeps us in the place of these western things that at the same time are collapsing. The house, the stadium, that whole idea, and obviously by saying "Those Were the Days,” it’s bringing time into that. In reality, the whole song is about what you're talking about, because then:
"They grew fat in famine
Our mortarless fortresses lie abandoned
Alien monoliths still standin', pantin'
Super Ape–"
--which is also a Lee Perry alter ego, the Super Ape, but then it's a Space Odyssey reference. One of the apes finds a weapon he can use and becomes the ruler of all the apes. "They grew fat in famine," whether that's about Europeans or about wealthy African elites is up to interpretation. "Super Ape put a candle in a skull for a lantern."
Then it’s "Light a Dutch in Haarlem, Amsterdam, steps of a mansion / Speaking Afrikaans, British accent, I want mine from back when." Here you have, in my mind at least, a Black African, the scion, the child of these disparate forces, coming to the place that generated them. “Speaking Afrikaans," which is a Dutch settler language in South Africa. "Speaking Afrikaans with a British accent," the British conquered the Afrikaners and made it into a British colony. "I want mine from back when / Thebe said the wind get the ashes in the end, bruv," so again, time. Thebe [Kgositsile] is also South African, through his father, and that's a line on one of the songs about his father's passing.
Then it goes, "The gorilla severed every inoculated limb–”
Severed limbs again.
Yeah, "Every inoculated limb, left 'em with stubs." This time, the gorillas being referenced--well, one, you can think that it was another ape reference, and then also there's the idea of guerilla movements, freedom movements, and this also takes us to Apocalypse Now. There's this apocryphal story–the colonialist attempting to suppress the rebellion goes to a village and inoculates the children, the people, for polio, and then in this story in the movie--which is of course based on Heart of Darkness, which needs no explanation why it's involved here--Kurtz claims that the guerillas chopped off the inoculated limbs of the populace.
Again, yes, a call to severed limbs, and this time the severing is being done by people who theoretically are supposed to be there to save you or are fighting on your behalf. But also a rejection of all western things, including an inoculation or medicine that could help you. There's a lot of levels going on there, right? Then you have "Ziggurats on the Nile, bought the house and tore it down / All your yesterdays in one neat pile."
What a line.
To me, that's the house in the beginning, and perhaps the house in "Asylum." You could argue that in this, we see--especially with where it goes, with "The state is supreme" [sample] and so on and so forth, a flattening of the history of Africans. It kind of goes full circle. It starts with this person who has this big house in Africa that is falling apart, the cars are rusting, you know, the things that the white men left proved unable to be sustained. He stepped into his big house and took his Mercedes, but they're all crumbling, they're all falling apart now, and maybe you let them fall--he says "I let things fall apart." Then at the end, somebody buys it and just tears it down. So both as a real idea of a real house and real people, and the story in the beginning of a real place that was real to me, and also a bigger idea--whatever.
There's a lot of levels in this song that are about time, and I also think that you go through this whole period to come back again. In that story, interwoven is the constant subjugation and abuse of the people through various means. When the colonizer leaves, he's replaced by somebody else, you know? The continuation of the thing. Because in the end, it comes back to "The will of the state is supreme," and with those African drums--anyway, after that it's a different type of chaos. Because the first part of the song is chaos; it's merely controlled so you can make sense of it. The beat is chaotic, what's happening is terrible and chaotic, and then the second half of it, I guess the illusion of order is removed in terms of the structure of the song, the lyrics, everything.
There's so much in there, and I appreciate you going bit by bit.
Yeah, a lot of times people don't ask. I know a lot of the things are not obvious, nor should they be, but sometimes I'm surprised that people don't ask more often. 'Cause of course there are things in there that would be very difficult to fully parse, and would require a lot of thought, and I also think that that's fine, you know? That's how art is to me, and when I'm making it--'cause I'm not doing it to make it hard for myself, but there is a level on which I want to earn things. I don't want to just make a Space Odyssey reference because it rhymes in that line. I don't even care if people see it or not. I know that there's a connection there for me, and I want to be able to put it together.
If I'm not mistaken, this is your 10th solo LP. Do you ever think about those kinds of milestones?
I had no idea, if it is indeed true. It'd be cool to know, but that isn't one that I would personally think about. There are things that I have thought about or that become interesting. Like, okay, 10 years from History Will Absolve Me, that was definitely like, "Alright." I wasn't sitting waiting for it to happen, but it was interesting because I can definitely pinpoint that record as a point at which it was like, "If this doesn't work out, I might just be doing something else," who knows what. But a lot of things happened around that record, so preparing that 10th anniversary edition was meaningful to me. It was also crazy to think about in terms of my life because it's easy to remember what was happening then, and being like, "Oh, wow, that was 10 years ago" is interesting in its own way.
We talked about how points on this record call back to your earliest stuff. When you look at this record in the context of everything else you've done, what are you most proud of, or what stands out?
Man, I guess what I would say I'm most proud of is that I really think that I've done work that was valuable. Well, what are we talking about? I'm proud of myself for making it this far because honestly, I've had lots of people who helped me, but I really did it myself. Which doesn't matter--I'd be glad too if somebody helped me to it. There are lots of situations in which people have helped me, and there were people who helped me away from music in ways that allowed me to keep doing music, you know? I had employers who kept me employed for maybe a little longer than they really needed to. Those jobs, none of them ever paid a lot, but they helped me keep doing what I was doing. And you know, just support from people around you and so forth. But I was never anybody's darling, and people weren't out there trying to help me succeed, [laughs] so I'm proud of it on the level of, I didn't give up on myself.
The other thing is that I just knew that I wanted to do things that were meaningful, and I stuck to it. There were fans and supporters who did get it very early, and I just always thought, "Well, if you do things that are meaningful–you actually think that they're dope and good–then it won't be too bad at the end.” If people are like, "Aw, it was never popular," whatever. You won't feel too bad because some people will be like, "Man, that was great, though." Like, there's stuff that I think was great in my life, and I don't care that it was never the biggest TV show or movie or whatever. I know that it was great, and I know that it affected the way that I made art. I always figured I'd be better off just, yeah, doing something that you believe in rather than, "Oh, well, nobody's feeling this. I should do…"
But also being able to take criticism and not think, "Oh, I'm the best!" No, it's like, I've gotten a lot better, you know? I was never whack, although people thought I was, but I got better at everything, and I always was pushing myself. Today, tomorrow, I'm always pushing myself to try and go beyond. Do something different. It's not like you could just say, "Oh, I get billy woods albums. You could just listen to one and you got it." No, I feel like I put a lot of time and effort and energy into putting together projects that do different things, that push me in different ways, that reverberate on different frequencies. I wanted it to be something where if somebody was like, "I'm a billy woods fan," and they were like, "Oh, my favorite album is Hiding Places," or "My favorite album is Aethiopes," or "Known Unknowns," or "Terror Management," all of those could be valid.
You might disagree, but hopefully--hopefully--it would be something like–alright, Outkast. If you pick Southernplayalistic, ATLiens, or Aquemini, I don't really think we need to fight about it. They're all great. It just is gonna come down to what your favorite is. Or if somebody's like, Madvilliany or Doomsday–I'll even let somebody slide Viktor Vaughn into the conversation.
[laughs] Magnanimous of you.
I wouldn't be mad. I'd be like, "I don't think I can put it over it,” but it is great. I can see how somebody might be like, "Yeah, fuck that. This is the one for me," and it's not preposterous.
My thought has always been to just make good stuff that's meaningful and push myself to not sit in one place, and I think that I've done that, so I'm proud of myself for that. A lot of things. Like, live performing, I never loved it. It's something you work at, get better and better and better. I think I'm a better-than-good live performer now. We just came off this Armand Hammer tour, and I think we're kinda killin' it out there, you know? And always room to get better.
That's really what I would put as the answer to your question–getting better at everything is the biggest difference when I look back. And there's earlier work that's special in ways you can't replicate because you can't go back in time–speaking of flattening time–and be, like, 27 again, or 25. There's certain topics and ideas that you hit on in a way that you wouldn't now, but the way you hit on it then sometimes is right in a way that you wouldn't hit on it now. So you know, recognizing that at the same time, there's moments of brilliance that are spurred by what you don't know and what you didn't try to do that are special about other records, and I cherish that as well.
You mentioned criticism being part of that--is there any specific piece of criticism you've received that you were able to learn from and improve?
Well, growing up around my mother, an important thing I learned was--and again, there's some people whose criticism is lazy, but there's people whose art is lazy at times, you know what I mean? Some people are just not that good, and they're just doing their best, and it’s hard, and other people are bad. I think the main point for me is just that having grown up around it, sometimes I think people react viscerally in ways that I am thankful that I don't really. There's times that I'll be like, "Man, that's just bad," but I'm not--you know, I might watch somebody's review or see the score they give it and be like, "Hiding Places is a 7? How much better could it have been?"
[laughs] What do you want?
Really! What was the ceiling? Maybe these two people are not capable of doing anything above, like, an 8.5, in which case a 7.6 or whatever would make sense. You have to have an aspect to which it's like, "Alright, I'm not going to get caught up in that too much, and I just accept things for what they are." But then I really do enjoy–a good example is this guy Caltrops Press. He's a very good writer. He wrote something about Aethiopes recently that's worth a read, and especially because it's something where I'm like, "Oh, this is something I would actually show to my mother that she would have some respect for," which is not a small feat.
Speaking as a blogger, I can't imagine there's a ton of that.
Yeah, it's not a small feat. He obviously takes some time to put things together. And of course, there are things that, when I read it, I'm like, "That's not really it!" But I also grew up with my mom being a critic, so I know that there's a level on which the artist can participate in the discussion, and their opinion is legitimate, but it's not the only opinion. You could write a story and say, "Oh, I think these are the only things it was saying, and that's it," but other people can still read the story and interpret it through lenses that you may not have written it through. Somebody could be looking at–fuckin'--Aethiopes through a critical feminist lens and take a whole perspective on the record that may not be what you intended, but that doesn't make it not valid. What would make it not valid is poor scholarship. Poor reading. Trying to make connections that really aren't there. But there are going to be ideas present in work that you may not, as the creator, have consciously ever thought of.
Anyway, having grown up in the atmosphere that I did, I look at it in a very specific way. It's like, if your parents ran a restaurant, then when you go to a restaurant, you have a different understanding. Somebody's like, "Aw, man, the service is taking too long." Or like, "They have a seafood special that I love, but it's rarely ever on the menu when I come here." If you grew up around restaurants, you might be like, "You know what? The prices on that type of shellfish soar during XYZ months, so they're not buying it because it's too expensive to get..." whatever it is. Fuckin', Kumamoto oysters. That's why it's comin' off the menu, because otherwise they'd have to have a markup that'd make you come in and be like, “Why is the special $48 instead of $27?” Or conversely, you might have grown up around restaurants and be like, "Well, the fish special was probably just about to go bad, and that's why it's the fish special right now, which doesn't mean you shouldn't order it,” or whatever.
Similarly, I think I have a lot of perspective and insight sometimes other people might not have, but you're still allowed to be like, "Man, I hate that this restaurant has specials that they can't regularly stock.” Maybe the restaurant should think about getting some specials that they can keep, or having a regular menu that's good enough that people aren't coming in and getting disappointed, whatever the case may be. People are allowed their different perspectives, and I certainly am allowed mine, and that's how I think about it.
Your question was have I ever had a piece of--so yes, I would say a good place to look at would be Caltrops Press. Like I said, sometimes the reading that he has might not be exactly my reading, but his writing is superb, and for the most part, draws a lot of interesting lines and has interpretations, ideas, connections, thoughts, that I find illuminating. Occasionally spectacularly wrong, but most of the time, very illuminating and brave and challenging. I mean, I know there are easier people's work to write about. I'm not saying that because I think I'm better than everybody or whatever. I just know, as a person who's written about people's work, there are easier people's work to write about.