Armand Hammer

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Alexander Richter

The duo Armand Hammer standing on a road.

Armand Hammer: billy woods, left, and Elucid.

media release: Armand Hammer — the duo of rappers ELUCID and billy woods — make their debut performance for NPR's Tiny Desk. Joined by a killer band led by longtime collaborator Kenny Segal — featuring Mekala Session on drums, Diego Gaeta on keyboard, Jesse Justice on synthesizer, and Ryan Crosby on guitar and bass — the duo run through a set that pulls from both of their esteemed solo catalogs as well as Mercy, their acclaimed 2025 album with iconic producer The Alchemist.

After touring Europe earlier this year, Armand Hammer are set to tour North America throughout the fall, and have announced a slate of openers including Curly Castro, Open Mike Eagle, Quelle Chris, Kenny Segal, Human Error Club, and Sha Ray & DJ Haram — see full dates below. In addition to these duo dates, billy woods was recently announced as the opener for the indie rock band Geese at their Forest Hills Stadium show on October 3. 

For nearly a decade as a duo, and longer still as solo artists, Armand Hammer have left a palpable mark on modern rap and hip-hop. At turns both sharp-witted and soul-crushing, their lyrics unspool threads of socio-political, historical, and philosophical import with a potent blend of incisive critique, gallows humor, and narrative élan. Mercy captures them in peak form, replete with "the type of free-flowing brilliance that can only spring forth when every artist involved is totally in sync" (FADER). 

Mercy is the first Armand Hammer album since 2023's We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, a project that The Observer (UK) described as "an exceptional record that deserves your time and headphones" and The Line Of Best Fit deemed "their headiest and most impressive work thus far." On 2021's Haram, their first with The Alchemist, the duo "drag postcolonial wounds onto the examination table" (Pitchfork). Beats Per Minute called it "a tremendous success." 

Also in 2025, billy woods released GOLLIWOG, “a densely poetic, totally masterful tour de force" (Rolling Stone) and "one of 2025's truly essential albums" (FADER). And earlier this year, ELUCID released the "dense, dazzling" (New York Magazine) I Guess U Had To Be There, a collaborative album with Sebb Bash that The Quietus says "reaffirms his status as a lyrical juggernaut."

Mercy is out now via Backwoodz Studioz.

ELUCID — the NYC underground rap stalwart known for his own solo work as well as Armand Hammer, his duo with billy woods — and the veteran producer Sebb Bash meld their adjacent worlds together on "The Lorax (feat. billy woods)," ahead of I Guess U Had To Be There, a new album out Friday March 13 via Backwoodz Studioz  and globally distributed by Rhymesayers / Secretly Distribution. 

"The Lorax," in line with the Seussian tale, speaks of the human impact on the environment we depend on. Excavating even further into the Afro-future industrial complex, the trio delve into the "sophisticated savagery" inherent in the tense state of our world. 

Fresh off a run of acclaimed projects and tours, ELUCID’s lyricism here is razor-sharp, spiritually fractured, and boldly imaginative — deep-listening hip-hop powered by the kind of performance critics and fans will dissect for months. Sebb Bash, aka The Alchemist’s favorite producer, delivers a world of tense textures, dusty futurism, analog tape grime, and unexpected swing — a landscape custom-built for ELUCID’s shape-shifting cadences. Already-released singles include the "eerie, minimal glide" of lead single and album opener "First Light," and the "boom-bap slow-drift" of "Make Me Wise" (Stereogum).

There are moments in music when masters of their craft cross paths at the height of their respective powers — records like Madvillainy, Liquid Swords, Dr. Octagonecologyst, and Hell Hath No Fury — where the result is more than the sum of its parts. ELUCID and Sebb Bash find themselves in this heady, seemingly effortless mode on I Guess U Had To Be There. The beats shift and flip under ELUCID’s feet but he tightropes it all, delivery nimble as a mountain goat, producer and rapper moving in perfect synchronization.

Some shining stars make memorable appearances: billy woods, Breezly Brewin, Estee Nack, Shabaka Hutchings. But this is a two-man show, and the duo keep the spotlight where it belongs for a captivating, convention-defying listen. So fresh it sounds like it was made tomorrow, but bet money you could put this on in ’89 and get heads bopping.

Ever-prolific, ELUCID is an independent icon in the midst of a peerless run. I Guess U Had To Be There follows ELUCID's "enthralling" (MOJO) 2024 solo album REVELATOR. Pitchfork described it as "soul food for those who know a better world is possible if we're willing to fight for it," while The New York Times, in naming REVELATOR one of their Best Albums Of 2024, called it "a dense, overdriven, fiercely abrasive album that cranks up the tradition of Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad productions for 21st-century impact."

With Armand Hammer, he and billy woods keep delivering masterworks: 2025's Mercy, produced by The Alchemist, marked “their seventh stellar album in a row" (The Quietus). The project was deemed "cinematic and unsettling in the best way possible” (HotNewHipHop) and “the type of free-flowing brilliance that can only spring forth when every artist involved is totally in sync" (FADER). 

Mercy was the first Armand Hammer album since 2023's We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, a project that The Observer (UK) described as "an exceptional record that deserves your time and headphones" and The Line Of Best Fit deemed "their headiest and most impressive work thus far." Meanwhile, Pitchfork just included Armand Hammer’s 2017 album Rome in their 2025 list of The 100 Best Rap Albums Of All Time. 

ELUCID will be on tour throughout 2026 throughout Europe and North America with Armand Hammer.