billy woods, Kenny Segal - Maps

Maps is the new album from NYC rapper billy woods and LA producer Kenny Segal, their first full collaboration since 2019’s Hiding Places. Four years after that landmark record, the duo have reunited with a vengeance. Maps is a story of the road, or roads, taken and untaken; of living the dream and dreaming of another life. It is an album about trying to find your way home, after making your home wherever you lay your head.

“Kenny and I made more songs together before Hiding Places than we did after,” woods says. “I think we only collaborated once over the last four years and although we didn’t talk about it, I think we wanted to let that energy build again. Neither of us wanted to make Hiding Places 2. We needed to go on other journeys, artistic and otherwise, to come back and do something fresh.”

Produced in full by Kenny Segal, Maps features Danny Brown, ELUCID (Armand Hammer), Shabaka Hutchins, Sam Herring (Future Islands), Quelle Chris, Aesop Rock, Benjamin Booker, and ShrapKnel. Segal moves effortlessly through styles but everything is underpinned with deep basslines and mean drums laid down like railroad tracks. Weaving between poignant memoir, deadpan humor, and incandescent bursts of surrealism, Maps cements both artists’ place amongst the best of their time.

All songs written by billy woods except where noted
Produced and mixed by Kenny Segal
Engineered by Kenny Segal, Steel Tipped Dove
Additional engineering by Aesop Rock
Mastered by Willie Green @ The Greenhouse
Aaron Carmack - rhodes on 3,17
Aaron Shaw - tenor sax on 12
Jason Wool - piano on 11, rhodes on 16
Joanne - additional vocals on 15
Mike Parvizi - bass on 17
Ryan Crosby - guitar on 17
Shabaka Hutchings - flute on 10

Art Direction by billy woods
Illustrations by ashes57
Graphic Design by ashes57

Thanks to ELUCID, Mo Niklz, J. Corso, KK, Manami, Jeilah, J. Markey, Patric, Injury Reserve, Brooke, Alchemist, Joanne, Conor & Lauren, M. Crook, Dave @ DailyOp, Domenico, BoyQ, Akkee, Rich Jones, Anton, Yungmorpheus, and most memorably, Levi Neal.