Daniel KirbyEast Coast abstract hip hop duo Armand Hammer has spent the past decade quietly refining their sound and respective styles. But in recently years they’ve started gaining some much deserved attention with a series of stellar records, both collaboratively and individually.
Formed in 2013, and comprised of E L U C I D and billy woods, Armand Hammer have covered plenty of ground creatively. While their careers as solo artists go back to the early 2000s. E L U C I D boasts ten solo releases, while billy woods has released twelve, including six since 2019.
The prolific output of billy woods, in addition to the work he puts in at the helm of Backwoodz Studios, which issued E L U C I D’s 2022 album “I Told Bessie”, raises the question: does the man ever sleep? His exceptional work, both in front of and away from the mic, has led him to becoming widely respected amongst fans, critics and fellow artists alike.
Armand Hammer made their debut in 2013 with “Race Music”, which was followed by a four-year hiatus before releasing the well-received “Rome” in 2017. But it was 2018’s critically acclaimed “Parafin” when many came to the realisation that the duo possessed something truly unique.
Following a two year gap, Armand Hammer then put out a couple of albums within the space of eight months. The somewhat underrated “Shrines” arrived in 2020, displaying a striking cover with an NYPD officer preparing to tranquilise a tiger in a Harlem apartment. Then in 2021, they released the highly praised “Haram”, produced by Alchemist and with a provocative cover featuring two bloodied pig heads.
Arguably one of the best storytellers in hip hop today, billy woods is observant, political, cynical, dystopian and darkly comedic. The son of a Zimbabwean revolutionary father and a Jamaican academic mother, he has read and seen a lot, spending his decades living between the US, Zimbabwe and Jamaica.
Obscuring his face in press releases, or pixelating it when performing live on the likes of KEXP, billy woods started rapping in in 1998 with Vordal Mega of Cannibal Ox. E L U C I D on the other hand started rapping back in junior high, with his interest in music being influenced by his parents who performed in a church band on Long Island, New York.
The pair were introduced by Uncommon Nasa in 2011, with their first collaboration coming when E L U C I D recorded a couple of features for billy woods’ 2012 album “History Will Absolve Me”. Both rappers complement each other superbly, despite their differences in style. Their rhymes are rooted in their personal experiences, and both process life’s absurdities through a shared sense of humour. While they tell disjointed stories individually, their narratives intersect seamlessly as a duo on record.
E L U C I D’s rhymes are characterised by their personal, abstract, intricate, and atmospheric nature, with his sliding tone exuding a breathy and jazzy quality. In contrast, billy woods adopts a more deadpan delivery, often delving into bleak topics while referencing cultural icons, landmarks, and history. Their success stems from staying true to themselves and their vision of hip hop. It’s a vision that has gradually evolved over time, leading them to explore newer and increasingly creative directions.
This is particularly evident on their sixth studio album, “We Buy Diabetic Test Strips”. Both lyrically and sonically, it feels bigger, more experimental and abstract than their previous releases. It oscillates between ambient and hazy textures to harsh and heavy sounds, blending industrial, ambient, cloud, jazz, glitch, and psychedelia across its 15 tracks.
Featuring beats by past billy woods collaborators DJ Haram and Kenny Segal (known for producing his solo efforts “Hiding Places” in 2019 and “Maps” in 2023), as well as contributions from prominent names like JPEGMAFIA and El-P of Run The Jewels, the album boasts an impressive roster of producers. Additionally, the likes of Child Actor, August Fanon, Black No$e, and Willie Green make appearances, adding to the album’s diverse sonic landscape.
The number of different production credits lends the album a fragmented yet eclectic feel, something of a departure from their previous work. Nothing quite sounds the same and it can be difficult to categorise some of the beats, yet it also maintains a sense of fluidity throughout. These varied beats provide the perfect backdrop for the duo as they deliver bleak yet captivating lines, often containing multiple layers.
Both now in their 40s, Armand Hammer tackle a wide range of topics, including inequality, aging, anxiety, fatherhood, Blackness, Afro-centrism, poverty, gentrification, hopelessness, power dynamics, technology (including mass surveillance), and America’s interventionist foreign policy. Their rhymes are often intense, layered, and paranoid, blending dark humour and satirical poetry with history lessons and commentary on societal decay.
The album’s title was inspired by advertisements seen throughout New York offering cash in exchange for unused diabetic test strips. These advertisements are part of an informal economy that exists across cities in the U.S., where insured individuals sell their diagnostics to uninsured buyers who cannot afford the retail prices. It’s a depressing testament to America’s stark wealth disparities and its deeply flawed healthcare system.
“We Buy Diabetic Test Strips” eases into its opening tracks, kicking off with “Landlines” which is the first of several contributions from JPEGMAFIA. The track sets a surreal tone, with its warped arrangements containing reversed samples, ringing landline phones, ambient noise, and pitched vocal samples. E L U C I D reflects on his childhood memories from the 1990s, while billy woods pays homage to MF DOOM with the line: “Rather be co-dependent than co-defendants”.
The opener seamlessly melts into JPEGMAFIA’s standout contribution “Woke Up and Asked Siri How I’m Going to Die”. This haunting ambient collage features dreamy shifts and a repeating refrain from E L U C I D: “I ain’t seen the bottom yet”. Clocking in at just over two and a half minutes, it fades away as quickly as it comes into view.
“The Flexible Unreliability of Time and Memory” continues the dream-like pacing, this time with Child Actor on production. E L U C I D contemplates the fallibility of truth (“Certainty is a circle, I don’t believe you”) and reflects on the irony of “proving my identity to robots” online. Opening his verse by stating “I read the paper even though they told me not to”, billy woods also reflects on the lack of leadership among black youth: “I assure you, Jimmy Baldwin not coming through that door”.
Midway through JPEGMAFIA’s third contribution “When it Doesn’t Start With a Kiss”, a harder beat suddenly kicks in as E L U C I D passes the mic to billy woods. The album’s first guest Cavalier makes an appearance on the off-kilter Preservation produced jazz rap of “I Keep a Mirror in My Pocket”. The surreal and harsh “Trauma Mic”, produced by DJ Haram, follows with its industrial soundscape of hard drums and pounding synths.
“People I lost to COVID-19 but it ain’t do a thing to the fiends”, billy woods raps on “Niggardly (Blocked Call)” which features a sinister sounding wind chime-like sound over a beat by August Fanon. It’s a line that evokes the Bill Hicks joke about the good departing this world too soon, while demons continue to run amok: “John Lennon, murdered. Martin Luther King, murdered. Ghandi, murdered. Reagan, wounded”.
One recently departed demon gets a shout out on arguably the best line and also track of the album. “Henry Kissinger my album’s only feature”, billy woods hilariously states over El-P’s addictive, bassy, polyrhythmic beat on “The Gods Must Be Crazy”. After over two decades, El-P’s production still sounds as fresh and futuristic as it was when worked on Cannibal Ox’s “The Cold Vein”, released back in 2001 on his now defunct Definitive Jux label.
E L U C I D references Mos Def (“Black on both sides”) and Gil Scott-Heron (“Home is where the hatred is”), before billy woods delivers more memorable lines. He jokes about being cut from the Live Aid single, before referencing a Hilary Clinton interview from her 2016 election loss to Donald Trump: “White women with pepper spray in they purse interpolating Beyoncé”. He then turns his attention to America’s long history of overseas interventionism: “CIA scams, revolutionary plans / Overlapping Zen diagrams, overlapping”.
The beat on “Y’all Can’t Stand Right Here” by Steel Tipped Dove and Messiah Musik not only incorporates an MF DOOM sample of him uttering those very words, but also channels Madlib’s jazzy, psychedelia-influenced cuts on “Madvillainy”. Containing crashing keys, hysteric horns, and frantic percussion, the track undergoes a shift in the final third with billy woods highlighting the divide between blacks and whites during South Africa’s apartheid regime on the line: “Young Winnie Mandela in the courthouse / Black bra, white blouse”.
There’s a nod to Sun Ra on “Total Recall”, with E L U C I D borrowing from his anti-war piece “Nuclear War” on the chorus: “When they push that button… Your ass gotta go”. Kenny Segal provides the warped, slow-jam beat which features Shabaka Hutchings of The Comet Is Coming on woodwind. In another standout line, billy woods references the “Bloody Mary” folktale, substituting in the former Death Row CEO Suge Knight: “My bedtime stories had the kids crying before they got tucked in, but fuck it / The night’s dark and full of terrors / Might fuck around and say Suge Knight three times in the mirror”.
The final third of the album finds different producers on each track. Engineer Wille Green delivers a dubby beat with flute from Shabaka Hutchings on “Empire BLVD”, which also features contributions from Junglepussy and a Slick Rick-referencing Curly Castro. Pink Siifu makes an appearance on the ambient and jazzy multi-phase Black Noi$e and Jeff Markey-produced soundscape “Don’t Lose Your Job”, where E L U C I D asserts “what doesn’t kill you makes you blacker”, before Moor Mother’s spaced out poetry closes the track.
The DJ Haram produced “Supermooned” is a brief cut that leans more towards being a solo effort by billy woods, although ELUCID bookends it vocals. Beginning his first verse with a line about George Washington wearing “slave teeth in the mouth when he say nigga”, billy woods draws attention to the unsettling reality that America’s first president and symbol of liberation perpetuated racism by using the teeth of the people he enslaved.
E L U C I D repeats the line “a face behind this mask, behind this face” over Sebb Bash’s dreamy mix of bubbly synths and ambience on “Switchboard”. JPEGMAFIA then pop ups with his final contribution, laying down the woozy, crawling beat on “The Key Is Under the Mat” as both billy woods and E L U C I D state “that security deposit ain’t comin’ back”.
The album concludes with its longest track, spanning over eight minutes. The warped and surreal “Doves” begins with delicately strummed electric guitar, piano and ambient noise, accompanied by guest vocalist Benjamin Booker singing: “I was only a dove, only in love”. The final verse comes from billy woods who laments the loss of loved ones who can disappear “in a moment”, followed by E L U C I D’s echoed vocals closing the album with the phrase “great day” repeated amidst a wall of harsh noise.
“We Buy Diabetic Test Strips” may be challenging initially, but it grows richer with each spin as its depth and detail are revealed. There’s much to decipher, not only in billy woods’ and E L U C I D’s lyrics, but also in the experimental production. The album marks a significant leap forward in Armand Hammer’s evolution, hinting that their remarkable journey, both as a duo and as solo artists, could just be getting started.