04/18/26

Fuhrman Tapes

It's probably not obvious judging by the rest of this site, but I love hip hop. In fact, I'd argue that I listen to it as much - if not more than - heavy rock music. Insert name check here: Public Enemy, Gang Starr, The Roots and Hieroglyphics, just to name a few which stick out in my head.

No doubt all these artists have long histories, some of which now cease to exist. With that in mind, I won't spend the rest of this article lamenting golden age hip hop, as a keen eye can track this sound's evolution to the modern day. So much so, I would argue that we're in the midst of a renaissance period for hip hop overall, and especially for boom bap's forebears. New figures have risen to underground celebrity that you may know, artists with increasingly radical, varied sounds: Death Grips, JPEGMAFIA, MIKE, Earl Sweatshirt, and so on. Anymore, artists can make anything between avant-industrial, jagged trap music, or hypnogogic soul, and still have good reason to call it hip hop.

My point is there's tons of dope shit being put out, with a lot of different tonal things going on for each artist. And that leads me to my topic of discussion for today: Armand Hammer, hands down my favorite hip hop group, and one of my favorite artists overall.

Armand Hammer is a duo from NY consisting of E L U C I D and billy woods, each having highly productive solo careers. For over a decade now, they have worked together as Armand Hammer, putting out some of the most cerebral and intense rap music I've heard.

I find Armand Hammer's style skewed by design. The lyrics and production layer the husk of imploded modernity on top of sagging social architecture: just the same as it happens in reality, and just the same as it visualizes stagnation. This is a state where "murdering for standing up or lying down" ("Fuhrman Tapes") is bureaucratically grandfathered, violence an institution of ossification. Invariably, changed socioeconomic roles are not known to changed socioeconomic treatment: being "Unarmed, in a suit," and "slizzered ... on some self-care shit" ("Fuhrman Tapes") and murdered had it been thirty years ago. But it's not thirty years ago.

If He Holla

There's a mutilated oil painting in these lines and textures. Check "If He Holla" off the same album, Paraffin. The circular custom of hip hop beats gets its shit kicked on this track. The kick and snare drudge like ritual drums, rehearsed as life, as life is blessing to death-god or whatever fear is made of. Fear is the vocal samples, hovering over the landscape like mass psychosis. Listen close and there's the buzz of flies stuck in the lights of a corner store - or tenement home. Listen close as absent fathers fail "to beat the fuckin' system," distant Gods who go missing or absorbed again by the machine ("If He Holla").

This is a place lost to excitement. Like going down certain streets, the road seems to materialize with you on it against any prior perception of its being there. This is a place not really acknowledged for those who have not experienced it confrontationally. Growing out of urban passageways like lost societies, black teeth or ingrown nails, the automatic intuition is that this is not somewhere meant to be, not for any one to be in, but just as much an ecosystem. Throbbing, oversaturated and hostile, the worlds of Armand Hammer are like these streets, or like the gangrenous patches of a body left in them - still alive by some definition. Drenched with stains, disease and warmth straining, belief in humility's meaning can be learned listening closely and staying long enough. If you are willing, and if there is desire not to see oneself above it, a spirituality indebted to brutality may become known, and aesthetically entrancing.

Each of Armand Hammer's records is tonally or compositionally different enough to discourage further generalization. The above assessment of the music's characteristics seems broadly true regarding their entire discography; though I stress that the music's context greatly differs depending on who they collaborate with. For example, production for "Fuhrman Tapes" was credited to Messiah Musik and Willie Green, whereas the beat for "If He Holla" was designed by August Fanon. A series of different collaborators worked on Paraffin's soundscape, which makes it necessarily distinctive from 2021's Haram, the Alchemist* being that record's sole producer (*he also did 2025's Mercy).

And that leads me to my final point: billy woods owns a record label, and you should totally sign up for their mailing list. Many of Armand Hammer's collaborators have put out some great work with Backwoodz Studioz (woods' label), with a lot of this material being tonally adjacent to Armand Hammer. Some personal favorites are Shrapknel, Skech185, and Fielded. And if supplementary material is needed, make sure to check out Pink Siifu and other Armand Hammer features; they're all listed in the credits.