![]() Both woods and (especially) Elucid can practically ignore drum patterns, so Alchemist just keeps the drums out of it. He’s not trying to yank woods and Elucid out of the the style that they’ve established. With Haram, Alchemist tailors his sound to the warped, woozy aesthetic of past Armand Hammer records. (Right now, I’m living with “The transcript read like Cam’ron skits/ Something wrong with motherfuckers, I don’t know what it is.”) Sometimes, I let it wash over me, and the odd phrase will jump out and land hard. Sometimes, listening to them, I burrow deep, pausing and rewinding, trying to get a fuller picture of what they’re saying. You can dig into what woods and Elucid are saying for days, and you still won’t catch all the references. They deliver those lyrics in flat, hardbitten snarls, often fighting upstream against their beats. As rappers, Armand Hammer write dense, allusive, emotional lyrics - lyrics that demand total immersion and multiple open tabs. That’s what’s special about Haram - or, at any rate, it’s one of the special things about Haram. I’m going to make an album for that world, tour those venues.”Īlchemist has been making albums for that world for a long time now. ![]() That’s why I’m starting to lean to that shit. And even though it’s a lot of shit in that world that I don’t really love, I like what it represents. Just: “I remember people used to try to play me MF DOOM, and I’d be like, ‘Turn that off now.’ Now I’m to the point where me and him might even do something together.” Alc: “I started realizing the real love is from those kids, man, in the underground. I got to publish some of that Just Blaze/Alchemist shop-talk here, and everything they said was fascinating. Every big album had to have a bunch of R&B hooks and poppy club tracks. Back then, Just Blaze and the Alchemist were still working with to some of the biggest names in the history of New York rap, but they saw things crumbling. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was.Īt the time, Alchemist’s onetime mentor DJ Muggs had just finished making Grandmasters, a collaborative indie album with the GZA. I got to sit there, absorbing everything these guys were saying. Alchemist said that the Mobb Deep album was good but “there’s no singles on it.” Rather than redirecting the conversation, Just Blaze calmly and wordlessly reached over and hit stop on my tape recorder, and the conversation kept going. At the time, Alc was working on Mobb Deep’s ill-fated G-Unit debut Blood Money. The Alchemist was in there, working with Just’s protege Saigon on an album that would never come out. (In one expensive vintage-record boutique, he met Dan The Automator.) Later on, we went up to Baseline Studios - the place were so many Roc-A-Fella classics were made, and which Just had bought. ![]() I was working on a Village Voice profile on Just Blaze, and I’d shadowed Just while he ate pizza and went record shopping. I’ve written about this before, but a decade and a half ago, I spent an afternoon with the Alchemist. The fact that he found his way to billy woods and Elucid feels miraculous. ![]() And yet Alchemist still has a day job as Eminem’s tour DJ. Alchemist isn’t exactly mainstream-adjacent anymore, and he’s found his niche crafting extended collaborative works with sharp, incisive, typically underrated rappers. The duo of billy woods and Elucid exist on the furthest edges of underground rap, getting deep into the psychic wages of late-capitalist cog life over bent, jagged music that seems designed to reflect the unease that you should be feeling in your stomach - always, constantly. Armand Hammer, on the other hand, have been all about rupture and unease. Even when working with a fundamentally bleak rapper like Boldy James, Alchemist has specialized in mood, in creating an enveloping sensation. In recent years, Alchemist’s production has been soft, blissful.
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