For more than 20 years, billy woods and Elucid have been chronicling their arduous experiences as Black men navigating life in a society built to subjugate them. As solo artists and in the duo Armand Hammer , they’ve mined the bleakest manifestations of colonialism and man’s insatiable thirst for power, both interpersonally and internationally. Only over the past decade have they received their due, with projects like 2025’s Mercy and 2023’s We Buy Diabetic Test Strips that embody Toni Morrison’s resonant 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 are doing language like Armand Hammer. With Snakes & Ladders , surprise-released on Backwoodz Studioz, they exhibit their genius in fragmented witticisms (“The meek inherit the Earth when? 'Cause this I gots to see”) and potent commentary culled from mundane settings.…