billy woods and Elucid are barreling their way through fever dreams involving exiled Ethiopian presidents, boxing matches with daytime TV judges, and broken promises from God, as a crowd of around 800 people looks on, transfixed. At this New Jersey set during the doldrums of winter, part of a festival supporting DIY culture organized by the punk band Screaming Females, woods paces the stage dressed like the underground-rap lifer he is, his long locs stuffed into a hoodie underneath a maroon windbreaker. His booming voice gives dimension to solo tracks that weave dry humor and hyper-specific political and literary references into a tapestry of grave paranoia; Elucid, in a black zip-up sweater and cuffed khakis, follows with his own time-jumping astral projections. Experiencing their brand of left-of-center hip-hop can feel like doomscrolling while hurtling through whitewater rapids: It’s treacherous, disorienting, flowing, and entertaining all at once.
By the time they start running through their songs as a duo under the moniker Armand Hammer, particularly from 2021’s Haram, their collaborative album with the Alchemist, the diehard fans of woods’ long-running Backwoodz Studioz label truly reveal themselves. A cheer erupts from the back of the room when the psychedelic beat for “Black Sunlight” churns to life, before woods offsets the smooth instrumental with bars that zip from the disgraced investment bank Bear Stearns to Wesley Snipes’ taxes to KMD’s cult classic 1993 album Black Bastards, like a deadpan Ghostface Killah. Several people let their rap hands fly, including one in the mosh pit who’s rapping every word to the eerie “Scaffolds,” including ominous parables in miniature like, “Men wrack our brains over past deeds/Indeed the ground’s cold but the bones not deep.”
After their set it becomes even clearer how deep the fandom runs. The line for Backwoodz merch curls through one entrance and circles back into another. By the time I make it to the front, certain CDs are completely sold out. One loyalist who traveled an hour and a half to see Armand Hammer perform carries a cardboard box under his arm stuffed with Backwoodz vinyl, including out-of-print albums and special editions. When he gets to the table, Elucid and woods gently sift through the stack, humbled at their own history staring them in the face, and patiently sign each and every record.
Such devotion isn’t something woods would’ve expected when he first founded Backwoodz Studioz in 2002. What started as a one-man operation has ballooned into an indie rap powerhouse with a growing roster of like-minded artists eager to buck the system. Since the release of woods’ acclaimed 2012 solo album History Will Absolve Me in particular, Backwoodz has been on a steady incline in terms of both profit and quality, garnering cosigns from rap names across the spectrum, from Earl Sweatshirt to El-P to Moor Mother. The label is part of the lineage of independent New York hip-hop, standing on the shoulders of Fondle ‘Em Records, Definitive Jux, Rawkus, and Fat Beats, charting a path for uncompromising rap on its own frequency. “We’re at the point now where we need to be included in the conversation,” says woods, “even if it’s just, ‘I hate them dudes.’”
