SAMPLEDAethiopes at four years: billy woods and Preservation's empire record
Released April 8, 2022, Aethiopes is the billy woods album that most rewards a second listen. What Preservation's production is doing, and why the record sounds like nothing else in rap.
Aethiopes came out April 8, 2022, produced by Preservation. Four years on it is still the record in billy woods' catalog that people describe as "difficult," and still the one that pays back the most attention.
The production
Preservation is a digger's digger. The palette on Aethiopes (opens in a new tab) reaches well outside American rap's usual sample sources — reeds, strings, brittle percussion, vocal fragments in languages the average listener will not place. Loops are often left slightly unresolved, and the drums frequently arrive late or not at all.
The credits note that "Harlem" was co-produced by woods and NYNEX, itself co-produced by Glow In The Dark Flowers — a small detail that says something about how layered the record's construction is.
The subject
Empire. Not as an abstraction, but as a set of specific arrangements: who moved, who was moved, who profited, who kept the ledgers. woods writes about colonial history the way a novelist writes about a family — by circling small, physical details until the larger shape appears.
This is where his biography does real work. A childhood split between Africa, the West Indies and the U.S. is not a résumé line on this record; it is the vantage point.
Why it is hard on first listen
Three reasons, and none of them are accidental:
- The beats give you very little rhythmic anchor.
- The references are dense and mostly unexplained.
- The album refuses catharsis. There is no relief track.
How to listen to it
Play it twice in a row. On the first pass, follow the production and ignore the text. On the second, follow the text and ignore the production. The record snaps into focus somewhere in the middle of that second pass — and that snap is the reason people rank it at the top of woods' discography.
What to play after
Church, released the same year with Messiah Musik, is the softer landing. GOLLIWOG is the record where the historical horror of Aethiopes turns into literal horror imagery.