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When billy woods raps, “I’m dwelling, however my thoughts be wandering off,” it comes off as a little bit of a paradox. For a big a part of Maps, his new collaborative album with Kenny Segal, the state of wandering off is dwelling. However that music, ‘NYC Tapwater’, is about returning to the bodily place you name dwelling, which is the place this “hero’s journey” begins. “I really feel I acquired to return dwelling from a journey to have something to essentially say, proper?” woods stated in an interview with Rolling Stone. On songs like ‘NYC Tapwater’ and ‘Kenwood Audio system’, he reckons with the cultural demise of town in a approach so reducing and refined it couldn’t come from the lens of an observer. That is simply one of many roles woods occupies all through Maps, together with that of a passenger, an individual drifting from place to put with no obvious function apart from to doc what he finds. This ends in disconnected vignettes that say rather more about his personal rise to success and the broader techniques at work than regardless of the newest cease on tour is.
Even a cursory, breeze-through pay attention makes it clear woods has so much to say. Line by line, as at all times, there’s a wierd pleasure in making an attempt to untangle his knotted, suave rhymes and hint his shifts in perspective. However Maps is particularly fascinating contemplating the scope of his discography; conceptually, as a type of travelogue, it veers away from final 12 months’s Aethiopes and Church, two vastly totally different albums in their very own proper, however on the identical time appears to observe the identical fragmented, dream-like logic, which woods doesn’t a lot relaxation in as attempt to rip into. For a lot of like-minded artists, dense lyricism towards dreary, diffuse instrumentals is a snug vibe; for woods, it’s a problem to search out consolation amidst the unsteadiness. His second full-length collaboration with Segal, Maps each warps and perfects his strategy whereas pushing him to discover new territory.
‘Comfortable Touchdown’, which flips the refrain of Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’, paints a conflicting portrait of dissociation, one the place the excessive is illusory and short-lived however provides a uncommon second of readability that’s “nothing within the thought bubble/ From up right here the lakes is puddles, the land unfold/ Brown and inexperienced, it’s a quiet puzzle.” The glowing guitar that opens the music, peacefully countering woods’ darker dispatches, fizzles out, not clearing the best way a lot as passing the accountability to him. Among the album’s most transcendent, significant moments are like this, temporary and dreamy, usually compelling woods to lean into less complicated, extra direct language. You may chalk this as much as his masterful skill to, nicely, map out a music in an effort to land the correct punch, but it surely at all times works in tandem with, and even impressed by, Segal’s manufacturing. The feverish jazz of ‘Blue Smoke’ appears to tease the hearth out of woods’ supply, which stays cool and wryly pissed off. Then, a music referred to as ‘Dangerous Goals Are Solely Goals’ begins with the traces, “I can’t fairly seize the brand new me/ Outdated self dozing in an aisle seat,” and barely a minute passes earlier than the instrumental evaporates, denying any additional self-inquiry.
The perpetual jet lag woods finds himself trapped in invitations quite a lot of moods. Together with Segal’s manufacturing, a few of the visitors serve to drag him out of the haze: ‘Babylon By Bus’ and ‘12 months Zero’, which boast verses from ShrapKnel and Danny Brown respectively, flip the blurry darkness woods usually crawls by way of right into a menacing sprawl. Others, like Quelle Chris and his Armand Hammer associate Elucid, linger within the fog as a method of fleshing out a story. At their greatest, these appearances not solely really feel completely suited, however shed a lightweight on woods’ headspace: “Surprisingly I really feel proper at dwelling by myself,” goes the hypnotic refrain from Future Islands’ Samuel T. Herring on ‘FaceTime’, buying and selling in his expertise as a touring musician. “Once you was askin’ bout touring/ I get crux of the query,” Aesop Rock raps on ‘Ready Round’. “It’s simply the majority of the solutions are of one other dimension.”
Time and time once more, although, woods ranges with us. “I say I’m at peace however, it’s nonetheless that very same dread,” he admits on ‘Agriculture’, as if contesting the serenity of the instrumental – and his personal anticipated development. On ‘The Layover’, he raps: “I already knew the choices was lose-lose/ Child, that’s nothing new.” Despair is a loop, however there are new emotions and experiences to consider that ship Maps flying in numerous instructions. The unusual loneliness of ‘FaceTime’ might have its charms, but it surely provides no comfort towards dying, and so woods can’t absolutely succumb; no quantity of poetic symbolism or doomsaying can distract him from the second. That’s the place most of the songs on Maps – particularly ‘Comfortable Touchdown’ and the hanging nearer, ‘Because the Crow Flies’ – ultimately lead him. No matter you name dwelling, there’s nothing extra compelling, a lot that at any time when and wherever it finds woods, he appears to expire of phrases. For such a grasp wordsmith, that actually says one thing.
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