SAMPLED#Backwoodz Studioz
32 stories
Stories tagged #Backwoodz Studioz on Sampled — sound, style, and scenes, all in one place.
Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal finally made an album — DOOMED! is a breakup record with jokes
Two Project Blowed lifers, twenty years of friendship and fifteen songs about a relationship coming apart. Backwoodz calls it the world's first half-whimsical breakup album.
The billy woods discography, mapped
Solo albums, Armand Hammer records, instrumentals, compilations and remix companions — the full shape of billy woods' catalog with release dates and where to buy each one.
ELUCID and Sebb Bash stripped it back to two turntables and a microphone
I Guess U Had To Be There is a rapper-producer record in the oldest sense, with billy woods, Breeze Brewin, Estee Nack and Shabaka Hutchings passing through.
The billy woods collaborator map: producers, guests and the Backwoodz house sound
Fifteen producers on one album and a guest list drawn mostly from his own label — a guide to the people who build billy woods records.
PremRock only makes a solo album when he has something to say. Did You Enjoy Your Time Here…? is that album
Four years after Load Bearing Crow's Feet, the ShrapKnel co-founder returned with a record stitched together by Willie Green and stacked with Backwoodz regulars.
ShrapKnel handed a whole album to Controller 7 and it sharpened them
Curly Castro and PremRock's Nobody Planning To Leave is a single-producer record with Open Mike Eagle, Breezly Brewin, D-Styles and ELUCID in the margins.
How to buy billy woods on vinyl without overpaying
Backwoodz sells most of its catalog direct, presses in small runs and sells out fast. A practical guide to getting the records at retail instead of resale.
Sortilège: how one Aethiopes verse turned Preservation and Gabe 'Nandez into a duo
Nandez's appearance on "Sauvage" was the seed. The full-length that grew out of it is one of the most texturally strange records Backwoodz has released.
Fatboi Sharif and Child Actor had never worked together. Crayola Circles is what happened
Two longtime Backwoodz affiliates finally in one room — horror-movie writing over production that keeps refusing to behave.
Blockhead's The Aux is the Backwoodz posse album, disguised as a producer record
The veteran producer's first rap album since Garbology put him in the matchmaker seat — and doubled as a roster showcase for the label.
Backwoodz Studioz: a guide to the label billy woods built
The roster, the release model and the direct-to-fan store that make Backwoodz one of the most functional independent rap labels running.
doseone on Backwoodz: All Portrait, No Chorus is an indie rap pioneer refusing to coast
The Anticon co-founder teamed with Steel Tipped Dove for a January 10, 2025 album the label calls uncompromising — and it is.
Steel Tipped Dove has run the same Brooklyn walk-up studio for 15 years — and half the scene came through it
Joseph Fusaro is the producer whose name you only notice in the credits. That is exactly the point.
History Will Absolve Me: the album that made billy woods
Two years in the making and released in 2012, History Will Absolve Me is where billy woods stopped being a well-kept secret. A look back at the record and its reissue.
AKAI SOLO is part of the NYC indie rap wave and completely apart from it
The Brooklyn rapper has worked with Pink Siifu, Armand Hammer and Navy Blue — and still sounds like nobody else on the bill.
ØKSE is the Backwoodz record where four avant-garde musicians hand the mic to rappers
Savannah Harris, Mette Rasmussen, Val Jeanty and Petter Eldh built the band. billy woods, ELUCID, Maassai and Cavalier came along for the ride.
Willie Green got his first drum machine at eight. Now he mixes half the Backwoodz catalog
Berklee-trained, Brooklyn-based, and the reason a lot of these records sound like one continuous piece instead of a beat tape.
Fielded is the Backwoodz artist who might have engineered your favorite rapper's album
A trained musician turned bedroom producer, an R&B singer built on vulnerability, and a fixture in museum spaces from the Guggenheim to Art Basel.
Jeff Markey has been on Backwoodz since the first Armand Hammer mixtape — he just disappears between records
From "Native Sun" in 2013 to Sports & Leisure, the Akron-born producer's credits read like a decade of well-timed cameos.
Armand Hammer, explained: billy woods and ELUCID's 13-year run
Two of New York's most distinctive writers have been recording as a duo since 2013. A guide to the group, the albums and why the pairing works.
Defcee is a rapper, a writer and a teacher — and he runs one of Chicago's longest-standing rap workshops
Ten-plus projects since 2007, stages shared with Amiri Baraka and Chance the Rapper, and a monthly workshop broadcast that keeps the pipeline open.
SKECH185 came up in Chicago's most overlooked rap lineage — and it shows in every verse
Tomorrow Kings alum, southeast side native, graffiti writer first. He Left Nothing For The Swim Back is the record that put it all together.
GOWILLOG: 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.
Henry Canyons: the jazz saxophonist from Brooklyn ciphers who became an LA rap fixture
A self-described Brooklinite-French-Jew whose bilingual writing and melodic delivery came out of two coasts and a horn.
Cavalier was the one that got away. Different Type Time is what happened when he stopped getting away
Brooklyn-born, New Orleans-based, and finally in a place that let him make the sprawling record people had been waiting fifteen years for.
GOLLIWOG explained: billy woods' horror album, in context
Nineteen tracks, fifteen producers, and a title designed to make you uncomfortable — what billy woods' GOLLIWOG actually is, using the label's own credits and release notes.
Child Actor is reportedly one of Alchemist's favorite producers — and he came up through Backwoodz
Armand Hammer, Navy Blue, Open Mike Eagle, Quelle Chris, Moor Mother. Then CINE, the album that proved he could carry one himself.
Where to start with billy woods: 6 albums, in order
A first-listen order for billy woods' catalog, from the accessible entry points to the deep end, with release dates and producers taken from the label's own pages.
Duncecap went from the karma kids to Go Climb A Tree without losing the joke
The Brooklyn-by-way-of-New-Jersey rapper writes emotionally intelligent material that still sounds like it is having fun.
Who is billy woods? A guide to rap's most quietly influential writer
D.C. by birth, New York by residence, Africa and the West Indies by childhood: a plain-language introduction to billy woods, the rapper who built Backwoodz Studioz into the most consistent independent label in underground rap.
Curly Castro is the furious half of ShrapKnel — and one of Backwoodz's most political writers
Wrecking Crew veteran, Philly-based, and the rapper who turns a verse into a history lesson without slowing down.
Sha Ray & DJ Haram Join Forces on 'Critical Thot'
The Bay Area rapper and the 700 Bliss producer pair up for a cross-country collaboration interrogating power, sexuality, and feminine authority.