Last month, I caught up with ELUCID and billy woods of New York rap duo Armand Hammer prior to the release of their new album We Buy Diabetic Test Strips on September 29th. Our discussion covers their lead single "Trauma Mic," woods's admiration of MIKE, the special air strike beats of Willie Green, and how the duo have been playing the game on hardmode.
Lachlan: Using your debut Race Music as a placeholder a decade on, I firstly want to discuss what happened before its creation. So, for Woods: how did a did a decade of changes take you from initiating your career with involvement with starting up Backwoodz all the way through to Race Music?
Woods: Just making music and putting it out and trying to figure out how to put music out. A comedy of errors, I guess. It’s hard for me to articulate so many things. I mean you’re talking about ten years artistically, professionally, and just in life. There’s no sort of blueprint that I would offer anyone to; I wasn’t very successful. But yeah, I was just making music and pursuing different avenues to try and put it out. Artistically, a lot had changed but that’s just the evolution of delivery and how I approach something. As far as the business, everything had changed. That’s a whole conversation about the business and the music industry between 2002 and 2011, which is like night and day. I don’t think I’d want to bore you with that. Giving up on what we saw to be a path to success in planning distribution and moving more units. Labels like, whoever you want to think of from that time. Indie labels where you have a distributor, you do ads, and you get bigger cultivating a direct consumer situation. To some extent, I would also say it was about being careful with allocation of resources and accepting the idea that you’re looking for something that’s a slower, sustainable build. Because we really had a couple of things happen where we crashed out and that’s just so demoralising. And if you get demoralised both artistically and financially at the same time, that’s when you start thinking about quitting.
Lachlan: With formation, how did the conception for Armand Hammer as a duo come about between you both? How did the crossing of paths of both of your solo careers develop?
Chaz: So, I guess the short story is, I met woods at a show. He was organising a show with someone called Uncommon Nasa. The event was called Yule Prog. It was held every year, like a big concert in New York. Underground-type rap sounds, progressive rap sounds. And I was playing the show and I met woods at the show. He kind of checked out my music and we began talking from there. He invited me to the studio. I loved what I heard and started writing. I think what we did that night ended up on the Cost of Living mixtape, which Backwoodz put out. And also a verse ended up on History Will Absolve Me. I think from there it all made sense that we should probably continue and keep stoking the fire. I think it was from there that Armand Hammer was formed, leading into Race Music.
Woods: Yeah, that all sounds pretty accurate to me. For my part, I had done a lot of collaborative work in the previous failing era of Backwoodz and we really paired things back. And so I was a little wary of doing something collaboratively. Once we started working together, I really felt that this could be dope and it would be worth a shot. Which it obviously was because we’re here talking now. … I should also say here that it’s important to note that ELUCID and Willie Green were acquainted through Small Professor, outside of me. So I was the last one in some of these circles to know who ELUCID was.
Chaz: Is that really true?
Woods: Was it after you met me that you met Willie Green?
Chaz: I think so. I think the first time I met Willie Green was when I heard “Pompeii” in the studio. What you’re talking about, the song I did with Small Pro and being in the studio with Willie Green was after we met.
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Woods: But yeah, I felt that this guy was super talented. You can’t just be like I want to work with super talented people because just because they’re talented doesn’t mean you’ll be able to form a good working relationship or that you’ll have the same goals. But you have to try to challenge yourself and surround yourself with people whose work you find challenging and interesting if you want to be doing interesting things. Unless you’re already such a phenom that you don’t need help, which, I’d been doing it for ten years and it had got nowhere. So that wasn’t the case for me. Being like ‘okay, I see this,’ and then being willing to take the shot. Then also afterwards to keep working at it, because it wasn’t like the album came out and everything cracked open, you know. Moderately successful, definitely. Fairly well received, enough to keep going, but you have to keep working and we’ve built on that foundation to get to where we’re at now. There was no big moment, you know what I mean?
Lachlan: How has the dynamic changed or been influenced in the ten years since? Have there been particularly notable events or decisions that impacted on Armand Hammer from either of your perspectives?
Woods: The first thing that would come to mind is that life changes. People have different circumstances and different things happening in different ways. Like you could look at any of your friends who you’ve known for over ten years and think there was a time they lived right next to me and we’d meet up all the time. Then there was a time they lived on the West Coast for a while. So, things changed in those ways. There was a whole period of time where Chaz was living in Long Island. There was a time he was living in Fort Greene and I was running around that area a lot so I’d drop by randomly. And now we’re actually neighbours.
Chaz: True.
Woods: It’s crazy to think about because this is by far the closest we’ve lived to each other. A few blocks, literally. But I’m over there less than I was in lots of other places because our lives were also different. But we probably spend as much time together when you add on the touring and other stuff. But yeah, I would say the first thing that comes to me is all the changes that have taken place in our lives, our families, our experiences, our experiences together. Producers who you know and don’t know. I mean some of the best beats on Race Music were made by people who don’t make music anymore. Relationships have evolved so much too since then. Like Willie Green was making beats all the time, now he’s an engineer. You’ve got to call him in for special assignment beats. Any Willie Green beats you’ve heard on Terror Management or the upcoming Armand Hammer project, for a while now, you’re calling in a special air strike. You don’t just get beat packs anymore.
Lachlan: With the Backwoodz label roster, how did this tightly knit Backwoodz rap community – working with the same multitude of producers in and out of the label as well as regularly featured associated artists – come about? How important do you find it, with its strength of relationships and familiarity, for making music?
Chaz: It’s been an interesting experience because I’ve always really, really pursued a solo thing and been a hired gun of sorts with collaboration. But the past maybe five or six years is when I’ve probably collaborated the most, and this era, collaborating with this crazy network of people, it’s dope to be able to just reach out and ask people how they feel about collaborating with me. There’s now a mutual respect where, most times, they’re going to say yes. And that’s a beautiful thing.
Woods: There are a lot of people who we’ve ended up working with who found me. Or each situation has its own dynamic. I think you just keep trying to move forward and learn from mistakes. Get better, ask questions of people who you get to meet along the way, they might share some insights with you. Focus on the job, each artist on their project and really having an environment where what you can do and can’t do with that particular artist is clear. It’s working out alright. Everyone who works with us is on a one album deal so if people are coming back then you’re doing something right.
Lachlan: Are there any improvements or changes you can see happening in the future to the state of both underground and more mainstream hip-hop? What would you both ideally want to see?
Woods: Well, I think there’s lots of very talented young hip-hop artists. There’s a great sense of community and certainly a lot more openness in the minds of consumers and media people than has existed previously for most of the time I’ve been doing this. It’s sometimes amazing to see how young an artist, like MIKE, it constantly blows me away with how young he is, because at that age I was still trying to find my voice separately from my influences. Now people are fully formed—have already influenced other people, you know. For people like MIKE, if he stopped rapping today, there would be a huge imprint that you would have to talk about if you were going to talk about this era of indie hip-hop. Even reaching out to bigger than indie level, like Earl [Sweatshirt] is on a major. Then you’ll have to point, at some extent, to MIKE, who, I don’t know about now, but when I first did shows with him, wasn’t old enough to drink. And that’s kind of crazy, to think that you could already have a legacy. People will be like Nas was eighteen when he did “Live at the Barbeque,” or seventeen – and that’s cool, no doubt about it. For that era, it’s crazy. But with MIKE it’s just already crazy to think about the guy’s impact and the size of his catalogue. The things that these younger rappers have done with the scene is really interesting to see.
Chaz: I guess I seem to piggyback on what seems to be more of an openness from listeners and, I guess, industry people, and I feel like we’re walking in the direction of a sort of balance that I thought hip-hip should’ve been presenting twenty years ago. You know what I mean? I always felt like the type of rap I was making was always shunned for many reasons, but usually coming from the idea of this othering of the underground. How it was maybe perceived as lesser quality in terms of presentation, in terms of skill, in terms of exposure and for a while I feel like it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I feel like when I started putting music out online, maybe like 2009, looking back on it now, it feels like some kind of dark age. A lot of the music from that era, from people that I was involved with, or even from myself, it’s kind of lost. I existed and then the rapper share links expired. There’s a whole era of really, really good things that just deserve more, I think. Right now, that door is opening. With this Armand Hammer project, my solo music, Woods’s solo music, we’ve definitely stayed true to this. We’ve played the game on hardmode, I feel like. And we’re kicking ass, I really feel that. We’re reaping what we’ve actually sown. So I feel pretty optimistic, for ourselves, for everyone around us. I really love that I’m involved in a label like Backwoodz, that celebrates so many different kinds of styles. It’s an open door for everyone to really show up. So yeah, we came to get it.
Woods: Yeah, I agree with that. And not only the underground to bigger levels but even the rigidity that existed within the underground. I felt like, obviously I had ways to go to get better as an artist, but I felt that it needed to be different. Things needed to fit into preexisting moulds, and modes of thought and expression, extremely within the underground scene. To the extent that if you were doing something different, which should be cool, that you’re doing something different, people would be like: ‘nah. Don’t know what box this fits in, so forget it.’
Chaz: Yeah, done.
Woods: ‘It’s not conscious enough.’ Whatever that means. And just very limited modes and ways of looking at things. And a lot of follow up. Like the type of stuff people do today where people talk about, ‘the beats, why aren’t they like this and that like that.’ What people clown on or at least there’s a debate about what was our regular way of thinking. ‘The beats don’t sound like ‘x?’ I’m not even going to entertain the thought or try to listen.’ Rhyme scheme going from metaphor to punchline, metaphor to punchline? Not even trying to check for it. Oh, the beats are abrasive? Not checking for it.
Chaz: Your pants are too tight! Yeah, the conservative rap coalition is definitely calling the shots.
Woods: And then on the other side of things, everything was hyper-compartmentalised: it had to fit in a box. Because you had people who were doing weird things, but then they were put in a weird box over there. Like Anticon fans. You’d be like, do these people even like rap? But those people were doing different, interesting things. All of this still exists but its given so much less credence now. Now, you can be like ‘I’m doing my weird thing over here and I’m good.’
Lachlan: There is a distinct frustration and harshness that is characteristic to Armand Hammer’s music that is essential to communicating your message. How do you both go about funnelling this degree of emotion and experience through your music?
Woods: Expressing myself through my writing is not something I have to think about really. It’s something I’ve done for so long that the idea of ‘how do I?’ is kind of asking someone who has been cooking their whole life, ‘how do you decide what to make for dinner?’ I mean at that point, it’s kind of like ‘when I feel like eating.’ Because that is what I do and have done for so long. Sometimes things channel themselves through, I imagine, my subconscious. Then sometimes my creative thoughts are whimsy or pulling me where the beat is going. Sometimes I’m not frustrated and I’m having a great time. The channelling is finding out ‘oh, what am I doing?’ You find out what you’re doing as soon as you start doing it. Usually you start to think, ‘okay I’m working with someone, what is pulling? Where is the conversation going? What commitments do you have?’ Or maybe you’re working on an album yourself. Then once you lock in on what you’re writing about. Like with Maps, new ideas come to you, because I’m travelling around. With COVID, we’d miss our flights in Belgium because of COVID rules, me and Chaz are together, and end up going back to the hotel we were staying at the night before and have a weird day. In one of the perfectly fine but less interesting places in Europe. It was just a memorable thing that happened in the back of my mind. Then I went back to Brussels by myself and, of course, In Bruges is a film I’d seen multiple times so that was enough to get the first line and then it’s just writing and bringing in all of these things from your actual life.
Chaz: With the abrasiveness of “Trauma Mic,” if anything, I’d say it’s a return to what I’ve done ten or twelve years ago. I feel my music has been a little bit softer. Interestingly, as the profile has risen, my music has become a little less challenging. I love that vibe, anyway, circling back to what I did in the past. It’s a little bit more screamo, a little bit darker, a little bit more heavy, a bit more abrasive. Again, I’m referring to those sort of lost ages. Records that I’ve done as Concrete Sound System. Some of those early mixtapes of mine. Shout out to Frank from Rappers I Know. We’ve been doing this for so long, we’ve built up this literal artillery of styles. There are so many ways it can go. It’s really all about the beat. Do I like it enough to listen to it for an hour, so I can write to it? I want to listen to what it has to tell me and then take it from there. “Trauma Mic” is a perfect example of that.
Lachlan: How has working with so many different producers changed the complexion of Armand Hammer and what particular albums are able to communicate? From the single, individual vision of the Alchemist on Haram versus a multitude of Backwoodz producers doing different tracks in a collective in the case of other albums? What has it been like creating the new project with respect to producer input and vision?
Chaz: I think from the beginning, we definitely wanted a sharp turn from what we had already presented. We love to challenge ourselves with every record and not make the same record twice in a row. So with Haram, to me Haram is a very lean and powerful album and it was chiselled by the hands of Alchemist, who produced the whole thing top to bottom. So now, for me personally, it felt that I wanted to be a little more indulgent with the sound choice. A little more sprawling, a little more expansive. And I don’t know how many producers but there are a lot of producers and a lot of musicians. I think [Test Strips] outrivals Shrines as the most hands involved in an Armand Hammer project. The players, the vocalists, there are so many people involved here. And yeah, I just wanted more to get more colours and take on that challenge of working with musicians and then using that technique of recording them as source material and then allowing producers to sample that. That was really interesting to me.
Lachlan: How do you both feel about the positive impact Armand Hammer’s musical and lyrical focus has on fans when it comes to tackling everyday social injustices and surviving in particularly volatile environments, in contexts across the world?
Woods: Well I think one thing about the United States is that you can get up in the morning and know that everyone around the world has some idea or thoughts about how it is here. There are a lot of places like that around the world, for better or worse. But you don’t have to think about… people who have consumed far more of your cultural creations than they have ever consumed of theirs. So, somebody could be listening to my music in Argentina, and yet have a much better idea of what the United States is just by the simple fact that we live in a world where the United States dominates economically and culturally. Especially culturally. So yeah, people have some idea – no matter how right or wrong it is – or opinion about the US no matter where you go. So, the average American has no thoughts about what it’s like in Buenos Airies but lots of people in Buenos Airies might have a thought about what it’s like in New York. Through a movie that was set in New York or a TV show or fucking some artist did a video here. We all know what it is. I feel that, on deeper levels than that, it’s so hard because people are all coming from their different places: meet the music where it meets you. If it’s just the sound of it, that’s fine. That can be how you first get into it and then later you’re like I’m kind of vibing more with the energy and you get to know more about it. But the first thing is whatever pulled you to it: if it’s the words, if it’s the sounds, if it’s the vibe. You just delve into it however deeply you want to from there.
Chaz: Yeah, I think you can do that. You’re taking cues from the music. Some artists are pretty referential and they might mention some things. I mean Woods, for example. It might not even be an easter egg, just saying particular names and places. It’s a cool thing when people begin to take their own interpretation of things I present. And sometimes they’re spot on and oftentimes they’re totally wrong. But either way is fine. In the music I’m just representing myself. How people take from that is how people take from that. It’s a pretty complex issue. Think about how people on the receiving end, receiving what I’m giving, factoring in preconceived notions and ideas about what they think I’m talking about, it can get pretty murky pretty quickly. So I think what Woods was saying about ‘let the music meet you’ is the best way to approach this music and appreciate this music. Let the music lead rather than any kind of ideas about things or experiences you’ve never had.