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billy woods understands the slippery resilience of New York City.
His career embodies it.
Thats the constant cycle for you, huh?Yeah, its a little bit of a heros journey.
Youre jumping back onto a moving train.
But theres a part of you thats still out there.
Theres promoting the record.
Somehow on the side, Im also attempting to fulfill features for people.
How do you pull all this off a few times a year?Its the gig.
Theyre not always solo projects.
Theres also thebookand everything.
Theres a lot going on right now.
Whether it will always be the case is a separate but equally valid question.
We got along, andHiding Placeswas a big record for both of us.
Suddenly, you were catching flights overseas, being in venues with tons of people.
Theres an aspect of being suddenly thrust back into the world in a big way.
Thats how I feel about the decade.
Thats where we were.
When we started working onMaps, though, I was in L.A., and we did a couple songs.
One of them was Rapper Weed.
I was there to do a show, and I continued on the road.
More and more I was just like, This is what I should be doing.
As I often do, I incorporated that idea into my methodology.
Its hard to get at the level that it once was, maybe damn near impossible.
So when I was working on that album, that was the only strain I smoked.
Its not like it used to be.
This was before Sour Diesel came out.
It was the most expensive strain of marijuana that ever had been in New York, at first.
Twenty dollars would be less than a gram, like .7.
Sour prices were easier so it started to take over.
Then California went recreational, and all that shit started coming over here …
I think you really see time folding inAethiopes, where Im moving through the African diaspora.
In some ways, I also include Europe in it.
Europeans came up with the idea of Africans to begin with.
Africa is a European invention.
For that matter, Europe is a European invention.
Blackness and whiteness are, themselves, both real things and also imagined ideas.
I wanted to make it different.
I feel like Kenny is a major factor.
I think when you work with Kenny, whos very melody-forward, your stuff gets a little more direct.
Im definitely doing more touring, and I definitely have higher-profile projects.
I dont know if theyre more melodically direct.
This is one album.Aethiopes, which was very successful, is pretty odd.
I dont feel theres any plan.
It was the same way withAethiopes.
We had lots of ideas of how the sound of it could go.
I dont want to suggest youre tailoring records for greater accessibility.
There arent that many Black men there.
This person is already coming to the show.
Doesnt take a lot to figure it out.
But in general, there hasnt been any complicating aspect, really.
I dont want to call it a dichotomy, though it might look that way to other people.
Also, I never really attracted a lot of attention from other labels.
I have my own label.
Its my record label.
Whats the catch?I dont know if I want to get into it.
Things have changed tremendously.
Better or worse is in the eye of the beholder.
People maybe spend less time with it.
People maybe spend less time making it.
Its hard to say.
At the same time, you have artists like Kendrick Lamar who drop albums like five years apart.
To a certain extent, there wasnt any mainstream artist still in their prime who was doing that.
Nas wasnt taking five years off.
Jay wasnt taking five years off.
This is a very judicious response.
I see culture flourishing but no thanks to the climate.
Its always under duress, rap music.
Its always surviving in spite of other forces in the city.
I feel good about the state of rap locally.
Music is a side thing.
Its a lot of stuff that really has nothing to do with rap.
Some of these people are rapping because everybody raps.
Let me take it back and just say, I feel like every era had its issues.
I think of that era and the blossoming of ideas came out of there as very bohemian.
At the same time, it was gully.
It was people in head wraps inside, but people got jumped.
Its a different era.
I want to resist being like, That was better.
Clean windows, though.I agree with that.
New York is a city that emptied out a significant portion of its population for decades.
And the thing is, gentrification isnt always the removal of people.
That definitely happened, but a lot of times it was also empty lots becoming buildings.
Rents rose, of course.
It came in eras, first artists and young professionals, whatever.
Theres some places that had a complete transformation, like the north side of Williamsburg.
I worked at Vice in Williamsburg in a year where you could literally watch the landscape change.
Really thinking about New York in the 90s, you lived in places that were underpopulated.
There would be just three abandoned buildings on your block.
I think he bought it in the early 90s.
I remember that day.
There were only two times we saw a cab destroyed on the block.
The other time, someone slipped an M-80 into a parked car.We were neighbors?
That was one of the wildest blocks I ever lived on in my life.
Theres some contenders, but that might be the one.
That little block opposite one of the oldest housing projects in New York City.
Do you see things brightening in the 2020s?Predicting the future is a shoddy business.
On the underground level, theres a lot of people doing some very interesting things here.
From an artistic standpoint, I think that lots of really cool things are happening.
And its preparing to move exponentially faster.
Its hard for me to really say, from a business perspective.
I think theres a lot of different voices out there.
But the point is that stuff is happening.
Im from the era where part of being a fan of music was gatekeeping.
It was a different vibe.
Now, its an inclusive environment.
It seems much more inclusive for LGBTQ people …
To a point.Yeah, I mean, its way different.
This generation of kids is different.
There are also things that suck.
Streaming is cool if youre really killing it.
Even on the indie level, if youre really killing it, streaming can be a boon for you.
Maybe it would have been when everyone was buying CDs …
This interview has been edited and condensed.
