billy woods’s second album of 2022 after Aethiopes is a collaboration with producer Messiah Musik, who’s also worked with him in his group Armand Hammer. (woods’ vocal partner in AH, ELUCID, is also a guest on this record.) The album is about weed, but it’s not some escapist stoner party record; it’s a collection of dark tales and memories of dealing, and in many ways it’s a meditation on trauma. As the chorus of the opening track puts it, “We was raised on paraquat/Scraped and fought/By the grace of God everybody else got caught.” Over mournful beats woods asks, with weed now decriminalized in his native New York, what was the point of all those years creeping around and running from the police?