music
Appropriating the name of the American oil tycoon, Armand Hammer is the incendiary union of ELUCID and Billy Woods. Two of the most innovative and creative minds to appear in hip hop in recent years, together they are one of the best and most acclaimed duos working in the genre today. Incorporating elements and samples from noise, jazz, soul, punk and electronica, Armand Hammer’s music guides us through the intricacies of life in the 21st century, cataloguing injustices and contradictions through dense, politically charged bars. In their arsenal of collaborations we find big names like Earl Sweatshirt, JPEGMAFIA, El-P, Moor Mother, Kenny Segal, Danny Brown, keiyaA, Shabaka Hutchings or the Alchemist, with whom they released the superb Haram (2021).
The paths of ELUCID and Billy Woods crossed for the first time in 2012, on Woods’ album History Will Absolve Me. The chemistry was there and logic dictated that this partnership should continue. It didn’t take more than a mixtape, Half Measures (2013) and an album, Race Music (2013), for it to be clear that woods and ELUCID were destined to make music together. In the years that followed, they continued to appear frequently on each other’s albums, growing together and gradually establishing themselves, each in their own right, as two of the most important figures in the New York underground. Armand Hammer would reappear in 2017 with the highly praised ROME. Buoyed by this success, and with a clear vision of what this pseudonym could be, they released four more phenomenal albums: Paraffin (2018), Shrines (2020), the super-awesome Haram (2021) and, most recently, they once again shook the hip hop world with We Buy Diabetic Test Strips (2023), distinguished by specialised critics as one of the best albums of the genre in 2023.
support portuguese republic – culture / directorate-general for the arts. rtcp – network of portuguese theatres and cinemas
