Each chapter which follows is told from then perspective of a different member of the village, each of them with their own myths and superstitions about this strange, lonely figure, and each of them, in turn, through their trauma or their terror, contributing in some small way to her tragic death.
Hurricane Season is one of the most brutal books I’ve ever read: blunt-force writing which churns a nauseating stew of raging machismo, small-town superstition and trauma begetting trauma, across lines drawn in blood. As I listened through the advance copy of Billy Woods’ new album that small, haunted village of La Matosa was the first thing on my mind.
It's hard not to take Golliwog as a rebuttal of sorts. After more than two decades Woods’ emerged ever so incrementally from the nichest of rap niches before arriving, in 2023, at a career breakout. Woods’ 2023 album Maps was perhaps his most immediately enjoyable record to date; a sonic travelogue which boasted sung verses and jokes about daiquiris. It had punchlines and hooks and it dealt in the universal experiences of life on the road. Golliwog makes absolutely no attempt to capitalise on that accessibility.
Just as Hurricane Season’s chapters float from house to house, revealing horrors behind each closed door, so too does Golliwog drift ominous between horror story - from the rag doll of the album’s cover to the ghosts of "Golgotha" and the vampire romance of "Misery". Sonically, the record sounds like a stroll through a haunted house. The beats are crafted by a menagerie of legends and underground stalwarts - El-P, The Alchemist, Shabaka Hutchings, Kenny Segal, Conductor - but all of their idiosyncratic styles are folded into the album’s sonic world: a ghostly tapestry of snatch piano, squawking sax and scattered laughter of Final Girls.
Despite the ghouls and zombies, there’s a tension at the
heart of the album between gothic horror and contemporary reality,
cutting across each-other as if they’re one and the same. "BLK XMAS" unfolds like a Shirley Jackson short - ending with Woods in bed,
surrounded by the scavenged possessions of a turfed-out family, evicted
by their landlord on Christmas Eve - but there’s no otherworldly hand at
play, no horror beyond destitution. On another song he professes that
“today I watched a man die in a hole from the comfort of my home / the
drone flew real low, no rush, real slow”.
What Woods is getting at is the core of what horror has always been, from Rumours to Day of the Living Dead:
fantastical imaginings of our earthly nightmares. Zombies themselves
appear on "BLK ZMBY", whose titles is a reference to the 1977 Fela Kuti
album; itself a blistering indictment of the Nigerian military
dictatorship. Woods’ song begins with a view from a beach, watching as
zombies staggering into the sea, except these bodies are actually just
people, pushed from their home countries by corrupt governments and
post-colonial extraction. “Universities empty, the troublemakers is
drowned or drivin' Uber overseas”. Moments like these prove Woods to be
one of rap’s best ever storytellers and, what’s even more remarkable, is
that among this Golliwog remains a distinctly New York rap
record too: full of dry asides, references to NBA draft picks and even a
fleeting appearance from Despot.
As Hurricane Season reaches its end it eventually
becomes apparent that The Witch is not a witch at all; just a lonely
soul living in a troubled town, the victim of gossip and bullying which
turned her into an exile. It was the townsfolk who made her, and the
townsfolk who killed her, either explicitly or with their suspicious
eyes. This idea that we are the makers of the horrors of our lives is
one Woods visits himself on "Make No Mistake": “it’s easy for you but
it’s hard for me / to forget the things we did ‘cus we had to eat… at
least that’s what we said when we did the deed”. Golliwog may
be filled with allusions to the cannon of Black horror but its setting
is the real world, a horror story created by our own loud silences.
That’s about as scary as it gets.
