On October 26, 2017, Armand Hammer released “It Was Written” and announced that ROME[/i], their first full length since 2013’s Race Music, was to be released in November. The track broke a long silence of the creative duo releasing music under this moniker. Their most recent project, Furtive Movements was released in 2014. Despite Armand Hammer going through what may seem like a temporary hiatus in the current musical climate of arguably excessive releases, Billy Woods & Elucid have been very busy in recent years. Both rappers have released high-quality solo projects in 2017, in the form of Woods’ varied Known Unknowns and Elucid’s urgent Valley of Grace. A listen to any project by these two shows that, due to the uncompromising nature of their music, marketability and pop-appeal is never the focus. However, based on the evidence of a bigger fanbase than either rapper had in the early 2000s and coverage from large publications like Noisey (Billy Woods, Elucid), Bandcamp, and Pitchfork, it’s clear that with time, Armand Hammer’s stock has been steadily rising.
After an attentive listen to "It Was Written", it's quite easy to see why the duo has grown in notoriety and why watering their style down is just not an option. Producer August Fanon's beat is a fantastic example of the capabilities of modern experimental rap with a mix of hard-hitting drums and cymbals, sharp horn stabs, and an echoing, off-kilter piano note. Woods opens up the song by ruminating on the challenge of his craft - which of course deals with the difficulty of putting what he sees and feels into words (“You only dream pictures/Snake-devoured tails, circle vicious/Search for words like how can I put this/When this itself is amorphous”). After depicting a past familial trauma, the rapper hits the listener with a bleak artistic evaluation, declaring that "the greats ain't write shit, they just poured out they anguish" before spitting a couple more bars and passing the mic to Elucid.
To those that have followed independent hip-hop closely, an analysis of the duo's history might suggest that they are continuing the tradition. This is not to suggest that they stuck in the past, but exactly the opposite - the tradition that they are continuing is one of forward-thinking. Many hip-hop heads remember fondly the era of the now-defunct Definitive Jux, led by El-P. The label put out albums that would come to be remembered as experimental rap classics, such as Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein. Two years after the release of that album, Vordful Mega of Cannibal Ox was featured on Billy Woods' debut album, Camouflage. Although Cannibal Ox was relatively big in the indie scene at the time, the feature did not change the albums' fate of not making a huge impact in the underground scene.
Flash-forward to the present - El-P, with an announcement of "hiatus", effectively ended Definitive Jux in 2010 and Billy Woods is now the emcee on the come up who also happens to have a rap label dedicated to adventurous hip-hop music: Backwoodz Studioz. Although the label has been around for some time and the music industry has changed radically since then, with the growing attention to Woods & Elucid, it's arguable that the outfit now has the potential to tap into similar energy to that which surrounded Def Jux in the early 2000s. Based on the sound of ROME, Armand Hammer, creatively at least, may already be there. The present sounds impressive and the future is bright. The quality of the Backwoodz roster is all one needs for evidence of where Backwoodz is capable of going. The label includes Woods, Elucid, rapper Henry Canyons, producer Willie Green, who has been with Woods since Camouflage, and Blockhead, who worked closely with former Def Jux rapper Aesop Rock, who recently rapped and produced alongside Woods.
On "It Was Written", Elucid describes his portion of the growing Backwoodz legacy, which officially started with Save Yourself, his incredible solo debut in 2016, as a "radical act of love and protection". Taking into account the forceful, unflinchingly experimental, and pro-black nature of their work, there isn't a better way to describe it. The emcee has embodied this mantra recently in Valley of Grace, in which he described America as a "dying star" and commented on its roots in white supremacy ("nothing is broke and this is how it's supposed to run/whiteness is a fortress western king stronghold") in "piano wire". ROME is a very different project sonically, but similar themes appear and are enhanced by the juxtaposition between the styles of the two emcees.
Although both rappers do have cryptic, at times seemingly stream-of-conscious styles, they rap completely differently. Elucid's grimy rasp attacks the mic with unbridled energy. Conversely, Woods lingers on his words more, rapping with a much grander voice, slower delivery, and an occasionally staggered flow. Despite the vast differences in rapping, both sound completely at home over the various dark soundscapes that producers August Fanon, Messiah Musik, Kenny Segal, Fresh Kils, High Priest, and JPEGMAFIA bring to ROME.
ROME’s similarity with Elucid's past work and its difference, by way of inventive Billy Woods humor, can be heard on album highlight "Microdose". The menacing August Fanon production is the sonic equivalent of hearing distant explosions as an apocalyptic society crumbles. Elucid enters with force and a necessary pause due to the weight of the subject matter: "I was born of the year in this country’s last recorded lynchin' - my question is who stopped recording". In the verse, the emcee snarls through words with his realist, socio-politically aware worldview, describing his complex place in society ("I’m still here to tell you somethin' - life is for the living, I’m a solution, I’m the condition, I’m a symptom, I’m a witness”). The hook, a deadpan "I am not astounded, I am not surprised" is the duo declaring that despite the chaos around them, they are not shocked, similarly to the way Elucid rapped that "nothing is broke" on Valley of Grace.
After a fine feature by Quelle Chris, Billy Woods joins "Microdose" to give the listener a very particular brand of hip-hop braggadocio in the form of classic hip-hop references. The use of classic hip-hop will not be a surprise to Woods fans, as the rapper recently dedicated an entire track to classic hip-hop on Known Unknowns ("Super predator"), praising Kool G Rap ("Kool G Rap to us Fredrick Douglass with the dutch") and other legendary emcees. In the final portion of his "Microdose" verse, Woods spits:
Your intro's too long you ain't ghost and Rae
Charlie Windgate in jail you can't just up and ride that wave
it's like niggas skip track 9 on the purple tape
Chris like woods, you overlookin' the fact they got beats for days
I had to concede the beats was indeed flames, which only made it more of a shame
In these bars, Woods is referring to Raekwon's classic "purple tape", Only Built For Cuban Linx, which heavily featured fellow Wu-Tang member Ghostface Killah. Tracks like "Wu-Gambinos" have notoriously long intros, but the wait is always justified by the lyrical demolition that occurs right after. In other words, Woods is implying that the rapper's lack of skill does not justify the intro time. At the same time, with "track 9", Woods implies that these rappers are unoriginal by saying that they didn't listen and learn from the message in "Shark Niggaz [Biters]", a track where Ghost and Rae rant about unoriginality. Finally, in the last bar, he addresses a constant in a large portion of current popular rap - the beats are amazing but wasted on the emcee because the lyricism is poor.
Lyrical odes to classic hip-hop can also be found on the relatively short, Fresh Kils produced "Dry Ice". The opening verse by Billy Woods may be autobiographical, with him spitting that "anything [he] ever got was on the arm, anything [he] ever got was on [his] own", painting a picture of himself as a lonely, at-risk child ("Type of kid who never want to be at home/be at the park shootin' hoops alone/ In the dark red flag but what you really gonna do for him? He already gone!”). Billy seems to suggest that the anger from this childhood, or perhaps from more recent times, causes him to be indifferent to society ("walk past homeless like cry me a river"), but also recognizes that he has a problem ("doc I'm gettin' sicker"). His verse is followed with a reference to "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 5 ("It’s like an ocean out there sometimes I wonder how I keep from going under though, under the undertow") which is repeated multiple times before the drum pattern switches up for an extremely captivating verse by Elucid.
Both emcees regularly deal out stellar verses - "Tread Lightly" serves as an example of them at their pinnacle. The song, which deals with police brutality and the dangers of their urban environment, opens up with police radioing each other over the tension of the ominous bassline and haunting piano of August Fanon's beat. By the communication, it's clear that the cops have located something or someone at "590 Maple", which is presumably where they find the subject of Billy Woods, whose lyrics center around someone who is in police custody. The police question the subject and urge him to respond quickly ("Once he came to first question what you gonna do with the time you got / Confused, they reiterated like gotta remember it’s not a lot"). He ends up revealing information they could have gotten from anyone: "words stolen from neighbors in bodegas when I cop my paper...like I said it’s a lot of time wasted".
Though Woods goes with short storytelling on "Tread Lightly", Elucid opts for a more scattered, non-narrative based approach in one of the stand-out verses of the LP. Elucid is at home, where the "wifi name is Assata is safe here", the stark contrast being that anywhere that Assata Shakur is safe is the exact opposite of the police custody of Woods' previous verse. He paints a grim picture of the effect of acquiring knowledge ("Knowing better don't mean you doin' better we watch the sky fall") before getting harrowingly real by stating that his "alarm clock is black children playing in the park - every nigger is a star / crowdfunded constellation burned keloid scar". The line taps into what Black America knows - that black children are never completely safe in a park. What causes this, be it trigger-happy officers like the murder of Tamir Rice or inner-city violence, is often crowdfunded - by gangs or in the case of police, literally crowdfunded by taxes. Elucid's line is a succinct and powerful example of the mind-state that can come with being black in America.
With "keloid scar", Elucid is likely alluding to injuries from shootings - death, a topic which is at the center of "Carnies". The warped keys of the Messiah Musik production, give the song an off-kilter haunted-fun-house atmosphere, assisted in part by Mach Hommy's appropriately hoarse voice and quality guest verse. The hook is morbid and manic - "I knew tonight would be the end of my life" repeated multiple times after death-filled verses. Woods describes his own shooting ("No good deed unpunished/ Pop corn in the bucket / Watch the stock plummet") and Elucid informs the listener of the order of proceedings in the case of his death ("Won't catch me runnin' / If they clap me at a standstill please burn this motherfucker down").
Even though all of ROME could be described as "dark", the instrumental and lyrical dystopia is extra-high during "Pergamum". Elucid begins the track thinking about the end of the world and the "seven horrors of Babylon, scratched in the palm of a vagabond". Here, Elucid is as enigmatic as ever, but there is a possibility that he is saying that those in the lowest caste of society - in this case, a person with no job or home, a "vagabond" - are the most at risk. This risk makes it more likely that they feel the effects of the seven deadly sins (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth) of society. For example, the greed and gluttony of the elite-class systemically work against the "vagabonds" to make it exponentially harder to change their fate. At the end of Elucid's portion of the song, which is graced with beautiful echoing guitar lines, the beat switches up to a sparse piano-based soundscape for one of Woods' best verses on the record.
On "Pergamum", Woods takes on the role of an elder inner-city hip-hop statesman and comments on the mistakes of the youth. The beginning of his verse covers the "long and storied history of fake thuggin'". There is a particularly unsettling one-liner: "Tupac went to art school but look at the grave the dug him". It's a chilling statement - even though the gangster life was extremely prevalent in the iconic emcee's music before joining Death Row, the almost openly gang-affiliated atmosphere of Death Row turned up the heat exponentially. By the verbal gestures in the ad-libs, the listener can envision Woods as a seasoned veteran as he shakes his head and laments the fate of the subject of the song ("And then you shoot your cousin / 6 feet deep before you realize you dug it”). The aggressive "year after year after year after year", that ends the track, suggests that similar downfalls are commonplace in Woods' grisly world.
The last two songs on ROME, “Barbarians” and “Overseas [epilogue]” are almost polar opposites. The JPEGMAFIA production of “Barbarians" is full of combative, machinery-like clicking and clacking as what sounds like a distorted organ-like synth gorgeously rises in the background. Elucid, who has the second verse, asks in a near-growl that the listener "show [him] [their] commandments", only to quickly assess the situation to determine that the "new testament god [is] seeming like a no show". The energy in "Barbarians" makes the noise-level of the closer, "Overseas [epilogue]", quite a surprise. The track is relatively light compared to the rest of ROME and features a loop of a slyly played sax and gong rings. In addition to being the most low-key track on the album, it is the only solo track - Woods is the only rapper who makes an appearance.
By the end of ROME, it's clear that both Woods & Elucid have only gotten better since Furtive Movements. Armand Hammer has strongly established itself as a group with a unique voice that is not afraid to get exploratory and abrasive with their production choices and esoteric with their wordplay. They are an extremely talented duo that is essential listening for fans of underground greats such as Aesop Rock, Cannibal Ox, El-P and MF DOOM. ROME is one of the finest achievements of Backwoodz Studioz to date and a stand-out hip-hop record of 2017.
