Great point. He’s already really established and has a great catalog. Excited to see what he does next

yeah i get that he is talking about the repeated themes about revenge in sahkespeares work but i wanted to understand was what is he trying to say with that metaphor ?

okay he talking about revenge but how does it connect to what he is trying to say

His favorite artist did rip him off for his big comeback album. Guy’s definitely doing something right.

Well the line before is: Jay said 'I'm about the dollar, what the f***s this 50 cent s***?'

Which is referencing a jab 50 made at Jay in a track and Jay responded with that line in a later song.

Essentially saying 50 aint nothing compared to him. And therein is the Shakespearean vengeance, settled through rap

Right. Plus the next line is, “Rest assured there’s curtains at the ending,” which continues the Shakespeare allusion. Seems like this is woods’ way of saying that life is a game and there are always characters/drama

“All the world’s a stage / And all the men and women merely players”

Exactly

clashmusic.com/features/an-original-strain-armand-hammer-interviewed
“I try to give people a break. Some people don’t know a lot of words and they’re not that smart. That’s also okay. It’s just disappointing sometimes when they have really good jobs. ” - Billy Woods
lmao

Very fair considering how many reviewers and interviewers instantly leap to those terms when labelling their music.

Not the only artists it happens to and its extremely lazy and regurgitated journalism.

Precisely why I dipped out of J school. Musicians despise journalists and started to feel that too

I mean the guy who wrote that article is a journalist too though. I think most artists are always going to have a problem with opinion-based journalism like critics. but if your journalism is just reporting on observations or facts I doubt it’s that controversial.
I could be wrong though, I don’t know much about journalism, the hip hop industry or the art world

I determined it to be the ultimate top 3 writers in hip-hop as of now and the answer is no, nobody. maybe 00s Aesop Rock but even then idk

billy does remind of Aesop sometimes, with all of the descriptive lines that sound like they could have come from a novel.

to me its rooooughly like this

S+ tier:
mach, KA, woods

S tier:
lupe, aes, hov

A+ tier:
kendrick, roc, earl, elucid

its kind of a strange rating bc basically I rate it both based on the entire discography and where their pens stand right now, which is why I didn't include folks like El-P, DOOM, Del, Ghost, Busdriver, Posdnuos and them. to me it just makes sense iunno

I could see medhane, Quelle Chris, YOD, Danny Brown, wiki and MIKE reaching for those tiers at some point, rn id say they're somewhere around A/A+ category

aesop rock is better than billy woods
DOOM is better than billy woods
billy nice tho

At what?

Question that probably popped many times in 315 pages but where do you read the lyrics of this guy? I can't valutate him very well. He is flowing good but I don't understand if he is saying some weird paranormal genius s*** or just corny lines if I don't got lyrics in front of me

The whole making genius removing his bars is boring

rapping

you don’t honestly
it’s impossible to get everything he’s saying because he uses words from multiple languages and mumbles sometimes, but when he talks straight, he talks straight. his earlier stuff like FYI and HBO are pretty easy to understand without reading, and he still makes songs with normal words here and there like Mozambique Drill.

Wrong decade

aesop is the 1.___ to billy woods 2.___:

1. boots riley 2. spike lee
1. sonny rollins 2. john coltrane
1. jack kerouac 2. charles bukowski
1. minor threat 2. bad brains
1. jack kirby 2. bernie wrightson
1. bernie sanders 2. che guevara
1. nyjah huston 2. mark gonzales
1. early career tom waits 2. late career tom waits

they do technically similar things, but one of them has a stronger catalogue, a more intriguing approach/perspective, and infinitely better taste.

Uh yeah that may be. I personally can’t stand Aesop, but DOOM might just be the objectively best rapper as far as technique.. still, woods makes the best, most interesting music of the three by far imo.

Nyjah to Mark Gonzales that’s perfect lol

fair enough