billy woods is a New York emcee who has been carving out his own unique space, whether it be with ELUCID as part of the group Armand Hammer, or as a solo artist releasing such challenging and confrontational albums such as History Will Absolve Me or Today, I Wrote Nothing. On his solo projects, he’s worked with producers such as Blockhead, Willie Green, A.M. Breakups, and Steel Tipped Dove, fellow East Coast artists who can give him a grimy underground sound that matches his delivery. It might come as just a little bit of a surprise that for his newest album, he paired up with Kenny Segal, the L.A. producer best known for his work with Milo. That’s exactly what he did, though, and Hiding Places makes for an interesting album that pushes and pulls both artists in different directions.

If you’re looking for the direct connection between these two, it happened on Armand Hammer’s Puffin, where Segal provided co-production on a couple of tracks. The two also shared a few collaborators, such as Open Mike Eagle and Hemlock Ernst. So while it might not be the most obvious pairing, it’s not so far out there once you take a minute to think it through. That said, Kenny Segal does bring a different style to the table than a lot of woods’ past producers. Segal tends towards this dreamy downtempo, lo-fi aesthetic, bringing in elements of post-rock and jazz along the way. In working with billy woods, Segal doesn’t just stick to his guns. There are moments across the album where he’ll add in some distorted guitar or bigger drum hits, but there are also a lot of moments where he does sit back on some beautiful and subtle production that forces woods out of his comfort zone. Now, woods isn’t exactly going to change who is with this album – there’s still plenty of abstract poetry paired with harsh truths about racial and social injustices in this country, but there are a few more tender or personal moments spread throughout the album that cut through the noise and come straight at you, such as on the moving “a day in the week in a year.” You get these moments, which set the album apart among woods’ discography, but then you also get to see woods push Segal out of his comfort zone, producing a track like “crawlspace,” which brings some disjointed funk and ‘70s psych to the album, which allows woods and ELUCID to hop on and spit their rhymes like they’ve been doing all decade.

It’s not the wildest pairing in the world, but it’s not the most obvious pairing, either. Woods and Segal use the creative tension between the two of them to make some music that neither would have made on their own, and that’s the real beauty of Hiding Places.