Armand Hammer Surprise-Release 'Snakes & Ladders' on Backwoodz Studioz

Armand Hammer, the duo of billy woods and Elucid, surprise-released their new album Snakes & Ladders on Backwoodz Studioz. It arrives after more than 20 years of the two rappers chronicling, in the source review's words, their arduous experiences as Black men in a society built to subjugate them.

The review grounds the pair's project in Toni Morrison's doctrine: "There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal." Few artists, the reviewer argues, are doing language like Armand Hammer.

What does the album actually sound like?

Snakes & Ladders showcases the duo's "genius in fragmented witticisms," exemplified by the line "The meek inherit the Earth when? 'Cause this I gots to see." The record draws potent commentary from mundane settings.

On "Jet Magazine," billy woods chants "Nostrand, Atlantic, Trinidad, Suriname!" — a call, per the review, to a "captive" African diaspora toiling in what he frames as the American project. On "Send for Me," Elucid's walk down Bushwick Avenue evokes "a wilderness of mirrors, like, 'Who is this King of Glory?'" Who else, the reviewer asks, could evoke so much from a walk down the block?

The production roster is drawn mostly from the indie rap scene the two have collectively cultivated:

• clipping. sets the tone on "Deadbolts," starting with spare piano and building to deep, reverbed percussion and shrieking effects that sound like wayward spirits piercing the veil.
• Kara-Do and Mekala Session give "Jet Magazine" a dose of acid jazz.
• Child Actor delivers the album's gentlest production on "Gravity."
• Preservation laces "Assembly Lines" to match bars like "ChatGPT'd a job application, the interview was online, the interviewer was AI."

Sebb Bash produces three beats, Kenny Segal has three, and Mekala Session appears on two. Backwoodz regulars Theravada, Steel Tipped Dove, and Animoss flank the other half of the album.

Where does this fit in their catalog?

The review frames Snakes & Ladders as a continuation of a late-career ascent. woods and Elucid have worked both as solo artists and as Armand Hammer, mining, across that span, the bleakest manifestations of colonialism and the human thirst for power — interpersonal and international alike. Only over the past decade, the review notes, have they received their due, via projects like 2025's Mercy and 2023's We Buy Diabetic Test Strips.

What does this change for listeners? The reviewer's verdict is that such a scattered array of producers has still crafted an album that collectively conveys "such a sad rhapsody" — a testament, in their reading, to the creative chemistry across the Backwoodz circle. That chemistry, and the duo's Morrison-inflected refusal of silence, is the mechanism that keeps a 20-year partnership producing sharpened language rather than nostalgia.