SAMPLEDGOWILLOG: the album billy woods made out of his own album
On Halloween 2025 Backwoodz released GOWILLOG — GOLLIWOG rebuilt from scratch by August Fanon. Here is what it is and how it differs from the record it came from.
Most rap remix albums are contractual filler. GOWILLOG is not.
Released October 31, 2025, it takes billy woods' GOLLIWOG and hands the whole thing to one producer, August Fanon, who rebuilt it. The Bandcamp credits (opens in a new tab) are short and tell you everything:
- Executive produced by billy woods
- Beats by August Fanon
- Mixed by August Fanon and Steel Tipped Dove
- Mastered by Willie Green
- Additional piano by Natalia Vacheishvili
- Cuts by DJ Mo Niklz
- Artwork by Ryan Mowry, design by Ashes 57
One producer instead of fifteen
The original album's defining feature was its production crowd — fifteen names, from The Alchemist to Shabaka Hutchings. GOWILLOG inverts that completely. Fanon handles every beat, so the record gains the thing GOLLIWOG deliberately refused: continuity.
That single-producer treatment turns a jump-cut horror anthology into something closer to a score.
What changed on the tracklist
The title is GOLLIWOG spelled backwards, and the sequencing follows the same logic — familiar songs surface in unfamiliar order and unfamiliar lengths. "Misery" returns at 2:14 instead of 2:12. "Counterclockwise" is cut down to barely a minute. "BLK XMAS featuring Bruiser Wolf" is reshaped. New titles appear: "Rifle on the wall" opens the record, and "Mascara on Mengistu" and "Lotus Eaters" have no direct counterpart on the original.
Some of the changes are jokes. Most are structural.
The physical run
Backwoodz kept it small and seasonal: 2,500 units of 150g "devil's night" vinyl — orange with black smoke — in a standard 12" jacket with a 12×12 insert, and 300 CDs with an 8-page booklet, both using Mowry's artwork.
Why it is worth your time
If you found GOLLIWOG too fragmented, GOWILLOG is the version that holds together. If you loved GOLLIWOG, this is a second read of the same text by a different interpreter — which is much rarer in rap than it should be.