by Khagan Aslanov (@virgilcrude)
Yarn dolls with distorted, blown out characteristics of what was meant to represent ‘black’ features, the golliwog was and continues to be a double dose of anti-black grotesque imagery – a caricature of an already-warped portrayal. First written in children’s books as a distinctly ugly but loveable presence, over years, the golliwog became increasingly more depicted as a mean, impish vaudevillian nightmare, cycling through every stereotype America built out for black people in pop culture – servants, house pets, minstrels, misfits, villains, an occasionally redeemable blight.
The image of the doll has receded out of wide circulation over the past few decades, but there was a long stretch when they were a ubiquitous presence in households and the media. It figured in advertisements, literature, countless streams of merchandise, and even made its way into Soviet propaganda cartoons that aired on TV during my childhood (showing stoic and ironically colour-blind communists swooping in to rescue perpetually downtrodden Africans from the clutches of capitalist classism). Who’s to tell how many of these dolls are collecting dust in Rustbelt attics? It is important to note that Robertson’s - a marmalade company that has been using the golliwog as a trademarked logo since the early 1900s - has never taken the doll or its image out of its manufacturing rotation.
This loaded moment, layered with multiple generations of racial antagonism, is where billy woods flings his listeners from the first words he utters on GOLLIWOG, his dense, highly textural exploration of what it truly means to feel dread. State-sanctioned violence, Cecil Rhodes, the horrors unveiling in the Gaza strip, Musk and Mars, the death of Gaddafi, domestic abuse, poverty, the quotidian tragedy of carrying on, and even fucking Dune all get namechecked here.
As has come to be ritual by now, billy woods unveils another humanistic and erudite whorl of meaning and meaningfulness on GOLLIWOG. In short, this is the best rapper around putting out the best rap album of the year.
On “Waterproof Mascara,” he samples a woman’s crying into a pitched staccato loop of sheer distress, as he raps about domestic violence. The song is queasy and rich and difficult to listen to. Just as stark is “BLK ZMBY,” where over a gurgling bass-line, he disembowels those who choose to follow the path of least resistance into the toil, the relentless grind, only interrupted by consumerism and bread and circuses. In yet another immaculate artistic flourish, woods bookends “BLK ZMBY” with snippets of Ugandan despot Yoweri Museveni giving a speech about his opposition all being agents of foreign evil. So it goes on GOLLIWOG – an enraged and exhausted atmospheric masterpiece that fearlessly plunges into discomfort and abuse; skin-toned, gender-based, domestic, federal, colonial, personal.
Near the end of the album comes “Lead Paint Test.” The deliriously good Willie Green number is a beautiful throwback to Rawkus and Lyricist Lounge records of the 90 as jazz codas, turntablism, and field recordings weave into a dreamy, unsettling beat. Woods trades deft, deeply felt verses with ELUCID and Cavalier, each phrase besting the one before, until he drops a sentence so shattering, it forges a hanging moment:
“If these walls could talk, they might not, after all, we don’t.”
Like with the golliwog itself, woods asks the listener to look beneath the happy gloss, all the way down to the cracked foundation of modern reality. It would be easy enough to conflate GOLLIWOG into a work of horrorcore or dystopian conjecture had woods inferred anything mystical, speculative, or inconceivable here. Guilt-wracked, empathy-lacquered, and self-serving posts aside, what was always true still holds: one race and class’ daily life is another’s post-apocalyptic fetish show.