Let me preface this by saying that people… are wonderful. You never know who you’ll meet, work with, and create bonds with for the next few years of your life. New friendships, new rivalries, new common enemies, new idols… the list goes on. In my personal opinion, a lot of these nuances seem to be highlighted when joining a new team, club, or any sort of organization, especially one where people love to use their voices (I won’t name any names, of course). I am 100% serious when I say that I am beyond grateful to have found a place in the groups I joined in college, and the love I have for everyone I’ve gotten close with is immeasurable. I would do anything for my friends. But that being said, there’s no way I can describe these groups of people without mentioning that times can get a bit… rough. At certain moments, everyone has something to say, and it’s never something that will put them on the same page. Even thinking about some of my most stimulating discussions (arguments) puts me at a loss for words, so let me cut it down to this: it’s no secret that big personalities exist. To all the lovely readers out there, I’m sure you all have experienced similar situations, so here is my guide to being in a group with big personalities. Follow these 15 rules at your own risk.

1. Never be afraid to take a step back. Moonwalk your way out of there.

2. Breathe and think about your words. Giving a delayed response can be better than spewing utter nonsense. Unless you’re in a time crunch, then ignore this rule.

3. Don’t lose your self-respect. It’s one of your best friends.

4. Remember that the world doesn’t revolve around one single person.

5. If you have something stupid to say, just don’t.

6. But also, don’t be afraid to speak up. No matter how stupid.

7. If someone clashes with your opinion in a disrespectful manner, call for a duel. Demand to meet them at sunrise at the roof of Fribley with a lightsaber. If they live on Northside, too bad.

8. If someone tries to walk all over you, tell them to clean their shoes and walk somewhere else.

9. Get a team horse and teach it to ‘neigh’ when someone steps out of line.

10. Please do not enter a villain arc. It’s not as effective as one might think. 

11. If you’re tired, think about Tomlinson during rush hour. This will make you tired for different reasons.

12. If you’re traveling, play a throwback playlist and watch everyone argue over Backstreet Boys vs. NSYNC (JC deserved better) for seven hours. 

13. Ask your team if math was invented or discovered and congratulate yourself on creating a new Western Front. 

14. Unite your whole team against you by claiming that CS majors actually do shower.

15. Play the quiet game, with the prize being 24/7 access to Nord.

As a bonus, here’s rule #16: When in doubt, write a movie script about your team and send it to Hollywood with precise casting ideas — for fun, you can even add The Rock going on a jungle excursion as a side adventure. Frankly speaking, you’ll probably be just fine without following any of these rules (except #3), but if you ever plan on following rule #7, please invite me to watch. That being said, I wish you the best of luck and hope you have an awesome time at CWRU. As I enter my third year here, I truly enjoy looking back at all the memories I made in the clubs I joined. To all the friends I made on my journey here thus far, thank you. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to write this at 3:00 am in Nord Hall. 

Starting in the 20th century, there has existed an inevitable dichotomy within music and media that many artists and curators refuse to stray from: either a work aims to make a grandiose impact by addressing a big-picture topic or looks to garner appeal through uniquely immersive, personal and intimate approaches that its audience can resonate with. Truly remarkable art exemplifies an immaculate balance between the two, and exceptional cases become widely celebrated, culture-defining works. Thriving far beneath the formulaic surface of 2020s commercial hip-hop is Aethiopes, the tenth studio album from elusive Brooklyn rapper billy woods. Dark personal narratives interwoven with myriad historical allusions make for a novel, yet rewarding, experience. Themes of familial and romantic strife, economic destitution, and institutional racism are found throughout Aethiopes, but not as tokenized signifiers of social consciousness or overcoming past hardships; instead, Woods leads the listener through a borderline dystopian reality inseparable from childhood trauma and ancient colonial horrors. The superficial, algorithm-driven state of today is presented as the crumbling facade of a nameless concrete building.

Aethiopes begins with the dusty and seemingly faraway piano sample of “Asylum”, setting the eerie tone of the album curated by the obscure, yet iconic, New York producer Preservation. Woods’ baritone voice emerges from the gloom with almost monotonous delivery, undercut by weary apprehensiveness in phrasing and imagery. He draws the listener in to experience the bleak stress of his youth: “Downstairs I hear my mother breaking dishes, my father trippin' / It's been quite bad lately, high tension, galvanized steel security fencing / To get through the day, give myself a mission / Anything what get me out the house a blessing.” There is a bitter mixture of boredom and paranoia in Woods’ recalled efforts to evade domestic hostility within his childhood home in Zimbabwe; the world outside is unsafe and unpredictable, but the track’s morose lyrics and sharp saxophone flares amidst trembling pianos make it clear that home is a place of anxiety and incarceration. The song’s title serves as a double entendre meant to reflect the feeling of being trapped while alluding to Mengistu Haile Mariam, the military dictator of Ethiopia who sought asylum in Zimbabwe after the end of his reign in 1991; Woods spends much of his first verse observing the activities of his next-door neighbor, whom he believes to be Mengistu living in exile within a compound surrounded by concrete walls and “Razor wire like a slinky.” Woods embodies Mengistu’s egress in a snaking second verse: “When everything collapse, he just melt into the crowd / Suitcase packed, melted down the crown / But a haven's only safe as long as they want you around.”

As the haunting production of “Asylum” begins to fade away during a tinny sample of heavily accented, cackling voices, tentative flutes join the mix right before the following song: “No Hard Feelings” bursts into motion with an eruption of shrill horns and a winding synth loop that seems to tighten with every passing second. Woods’ delivery gradually heightens to a forceful bellow as he metaphorically intertwines the horrific 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster and his own memories of watching a homeless drug addict outside his ground-floor Brooklyn apartment. Delving into the past elicits compartmentalized, discomforting flashes with Woods painfully exclaiming, “That's that empty pipe hissin', that's him crying and twitchin' / That's the vanishing point in the distance / Between us just the glass thickness / Cracked mirrors flash rictus.” The fragmented, crooked grin in the mirror represents both the state of decay faced by the homeless man and Woods’ fake smile concealing his inner unease at the man’s misfortune compared to his own. The shroud of survivor’s guilt engulfs the song as Woods describes hopping out of his new car “smellin' like no hard feelings” only to see the same impoverished man on the concrete tenement steps. The ending lines of the track find Woods on the receiving end of the phrase when he gets stood up on a date, which results in the song becoming thematically cyclical. He goes from the one doing the pitying, to the one who is pitied and looked down upon. Clips of TV programs surface in the final verse after a defeated Woods returns home and starts channel surfing: “An attack on the train, persons unknown / Baking shows, cold cases solved and closed / I dozed, woke up and ‘no hard feelings’ was all it said on my phone.” The song’s absence of drums replaced by descriptive emotional intensity more closely resembles elements of jagged, metered poetry than hip-hop. The raw vocal appeal and exceptional writing capabilities of billy woods are on full display in this song and throughout the rest of Aethiopes. 

Similarly vivid narratives comprise the entirety of “Christine,” a quiet and cinematic high point on Aethiopes due to its songwriting and musicality. The drowsiness of Woods’ younger self in the backseat of his parents’ car resurfaces as he’s “lulled by street lamps and the blackness in between”, weaving soft guitars between morose recollections of a devastating car accident and the death of Woods’ father years later in the form of bad dreams. Rusting, derelict cars and the lurking threat of law enforcement populate Woods’ surroundings in the dying light, soundtracked by barely present pulsing drums: “I'd seen it drivin' through, Granny on the stoop, she never waved back / High grass, four flats forward with the front passenger door mismatched / Blacked out truck with the rifle rack / The hunter checks his traps.” The potent imagery and acute bitterness in Woods’ descriptions place the listener in the dark backstreets of Brooklyn. Painful memories and institutional pressures blend together on this song, occasionally culminating in a ringing quote that perfectly encompasses the atmosphere of the album: “In a world full of cowards, it's bound to be tension.”

The high-strung details and pessimism of Woods’ own experiences are often applied to a wider historical context at intervals throughout the record; this is particularly evident on “Wharves,” a hypnotizing track led by the dissonant chiming of a bell on a misty pier, where an inexplicably foreboding feeling is in the air. The tranquility is pierced by menacing, primal drums as Woods presents a grim depiction of colonial invasion and poverty in Zimbabwe. His slithering, vitriolic verses directly subverts the Eurocentric perspective on racial subjugation and the horrific history of slavery in Africa. The track details how abandoned huts and kitchens with their “coal still warm” remain after their inhabitants have been captured and dragged away, mirroring the historical farmland repossession that began in the 1980s in Zimbabwe. Throughout “Wharves,” Woods’ visceral yet surgically measured lyrics ricochet between various settings from different centuries with very few lines. He makes reference to the spread of disease from Europe during the era of colonization in describing “Drums in the hills like sunset / The gun turrets swing right to left, / African queen on the ship’s deck / Shipwrecked Europeans swimmin' with the virus.” 

While Woods aims to shift the perspective of past history on some tracks, he looks towards the future with the same scrutiny in key points across Aethiopes. On the intense posse cut “NYNEX,” named after a now-obsolete telecommunications company, Woods delivers free-verse prophecies of doom over rhythmless, clipping snares: “Quinine powder and alcohol, stir until dissolved / The future isn't flying cars, it's Rachel Dolezal absolved / It's autonomous computers sending shooters back in time at the behest of defunct message boards / Translucent man-of-war.” The first line of this dense introduction references the solution by British forces used to treat malaria during the colonization of Africa. This mixture removed the threat malaria posed to European colonial powers during their conquest, thus facilitating their dominion of Africa after the seventeenth century and inevitably contributing to the subjugation and enslavement of communities all over the continent. Woods links this jarring history to Rachel Dolezal, the former head of an NAACP chapter in Washington who incited public outrage in 2015 upon claiming to be Black despite having two parents of entirely white European origin. Dolezal’s appropriation of Black culture is used by Woods to reveal the omnipresent threat of cultural erasure, which is the common link between his lines detailing the past and present. The final two lines literally unite all three tenses in depicting a future where the eradication of the human race and its history is controlled by intelligent machines. However, in all three instances Woods presents, the threat is all the more terrifying because it is invisible, hence the final statement.

Album closer “Smith + Cross” puts billy woods at the point of convergence between the historical influence of Aethiopes and the personal, narrative-driven elements of the album; a cathartic loop of sung vocals and shining guitar riffs sets the backdrop for Woods to deliver one final slew of references concerning Vietnam War protests, Roman Catholic anachronisms, Western capitalism, and exile in Cuba. The final lines of the album find Woods describing “Fire in the cane fields, generational trauma / At the museum, eyes glassy from the pain pills / Me and her in the diorama.” The history of dehumanization and terror faced by many communities in Africa aligns with Woods’ own experiences of generational trauma as a Black man in the institutionally racist United States. Through his identification with the museum exhibit, Woods conveys that the disadvantaged remain inevitably subjected to a perpetual cycle of pain, which the past has proven time and time again. The Rembrandt oil-on-canvas painting that serves as the cover for Aethiopes depicts the timeless expressions of false hope and devastation resulting from this cycle. Through a masterfully written, expertly produced project that transcends any one era of time, billy woods demonstrates an escape from the fate of the horrific past through the numbness of the liminal present.

[8.7 / 10]