Review Summary: Really wanna keep it a secret? Hide it from yourself (Out of mind).
There may not be another album cover that is as overt in outlining its themes and what you can expect to hear as the dilapidated house displayed on Hiding Places. It’s boarded up, it’s lopsided, it’s deteriorating. In a way, it’s inviting for all of the wrong reasons. There’s a pang of morbid curiosity surrounding what lies inside and if you dare to enter you will quickly find that Hiding Places is truly a house of horrors. There is decay, dread, desolation and treachery everywhere. Every door you open exposes a murky forlornness that will swallow you whole.
It’s almost comical how dreary Hiding Places is, with Kenny Segal's stellar production providing a perfect complement to woods' acerbic delivery and scathing lyricism. There is not a speckle of light creeping into any crevice on this album. No other album has crawled into my skin in the most uncomfortable ways like Hiding Places manages to achieve. Nearly every track on here evokes the worst kind of visceral feeling. There’s the eerie bleakness of “A Day in a Week in a Year” whose beat sounds like it was crafted underwater and the abrasive bass of “Bigfakelaugh.” The production on “Spider Hole” creates this alarming sense of consternation and sends shivers down my spine every time I hear it. It always feels like I stumbled upon a gruesome, gory crime scene that is the stuff of my nightmares. The second verse on closer “Red Dust” features some of the most unsettling lyrics I’ve ever heard: “I want us to be alone in your home/I wanna suck the marrow out ya bones/I wanna show you what I learned from the worst people I ever known.” Truly bone-chilling stuff.
Hiding Places combusted all of my perceptions of what hip-hop could be. In a way, it warped my perceptions of what the art of music could be. How could something so ugly be so entrancing? How could you feel compelled to keep coming back to something that grabs you by the throat and actively tries to expose you to the darkest sides of life? Hiding Places is truly a horror movie on record that has wormed its way into my subconscious in ways I never imagined music could achieve.
