Hi, everyone. Pleadthony Fifthtano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Armand Hammer album, Mercy.

Here we have the newest LP from the cutting edge, pioneering, one-of-a-kind abstract hip hop duo, Armand Hammer. These guys have been two of the best and most consistent lyricists on the East Coast for years now, repeatedly dishing out heady and grim rhymes for one album after another. When it comes to the duos, to members, E L U C I D and billy woods, what makes them different may be actually more important than what they have in terms of creative overlap. Billy's conversational flows and rap style make for quite the contrast from E L U C I D's monstrous rasp and icy demeanor.

They've also been on an incredible run lately, as they've just dropped what I think is their best album yet, We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, back in 2023, a record that featured some of their boldest and most memorable and most challenging writing, as well as songs to date, with a lot of strange and otherworldly production choices to boot. The material on this thing most definitely tested the limits of whatever the heck we're currently categorizing as abstract hip hop.

Mercy over here, I believe, is their seventh album together as Armand Hammer. But this thing is also a follow-up to another record in their catalog. That would be their previous collaboration with legendary producer The Alchemist, someone whose catalog of beat placements over the years, frankly, you could write a book about. But in the current context of hip hop, a lot of Alchemist's efforts and focus are on the underground since he's played a pretty large part in terraforming its landscape right now with his very loop-heavy and hypnotic beats. And those beats are also a part of why Armand Hammer has the influence and audience that they do today.

Because when the alchemist previously collaborated with these guys back in 2021 on the album Haram, it was a huge point of exposure for many uninitiated listeners at the time. This thing also proved to be a pretty strong project for both Armand Hammer and The Alchemist creatively, too, which gives Mercy a lot to live up to, not just because Haram has aged so well, but The Alchemist has been so prolific this year as well. There's also the fact that The Alchemist and Armand Hammer have grown quite a bit artistically in the time since Haram originally dropped, too.

I went into Mercy curious to see if they would advance their respective sounds in any way, come up with something new, present any challenges to one another creatively. But sadly, after having gone over this record multiple times, I don't think Mercy adds that much to their respective catalogs, even if this project still managed to be one of the more respectable alchemist crossovers and collabs I've heard this year. Because for the most part, it just feels like Uncle Al is just giving free reign to billy and E L U C I D to just take a bunch of beats that he might have just had sitting around. Or at least that's how it comes across.

I don't know. Either way, I will say, lyrically speaking, billy and E L U C I D seem like they are their usual selves here. Usual standards, really, which is nothing to complain about. I mean, that means for obviously lots of lyrical gems across this project, whether we're talking about billy's very dark and prickly and meta quips, as he takes an all-white crowd in front of him as a show as one of life's little jokes, or even him comparing himself to Nelson Mandela by his clan name. These are the sorts of framings and reference points that have come to define billy's writing style.

Deeper into this record, we also have larger statements like billy doing this funny tongue-and-cheek reflection on AI, creating art, bringing tears to his eyes, and the way tech today has built our modern panopticon. There's also "Dogeared", which might actually be one of my favorite Armand Hammer songs ever. A track that's loaded with these slice of life depictions, and billy approaches his verse, starting it with a question with someone asking, "What is the role of a poet in times like these?"

He then moves through all of this beautiful and evocative everyday life imagery and finishes things off being presented with this question again and still not really having an answer. He can't verbalize the justification for what it is exactly that he does, but simultaneously, the beauty and artistry in how he presented everything in the verse that he just wrote, that he just performed becomes the justification in and of itself. Just one of many reasons billy continues to be an unparalleled rapper right now.

Then, of course, there is E L U C I D, who continues to be a shadowy and essential presence on any Armand Hammer album. His gruff performance style continues to be the best option when it comes to an ear-grabbing start to any song, especially when he's matched up against these wild guitar and cymbal hits at the start of "Laraaji". His vocals also make him a no-brainer when it comes to delivering a refrain or any repeated line that has to really stick just because of how booming and large his voice often is.

He is, of course, a substantive lyricist as well. Whether he's painting a picture of everyday life and working and grinding on "Glue Traps". Or we could look at "Moonbow" as well, where we get this barrage of off-kilter rhyme architecture and bold juxtapositions: "Coastline contour / Hiss and crackle like third rock in God's crack pipe / How about some hardcore?" [and] "We was watching towers rise where they fell / Rockets, comets, scarabs, and scales." Again, if you're at all familiar with Armand Hammer at this point, what these guys do together lyrically is nothing new, and it seems like billy and E L U C I D's approach here is less reinventing the wheel and more proving these formulae still work.

The bigger question for me on this album, though, is whether or not Armand Hammer are continuing to get much out of collaborating again for an entire album with The Alchemist. Because in no way does this project feel like Armand Hammer building on what they accomplished on We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, because when it comes to moody, out there, boundary-less experimental rap music, that record still has so much more going for it.

But also a lot of the times when listening through this tracklist, I'm left wondering if we are getting a project that is even as good as Haram. Because occasionally the vibes here between the flows and the rhythms and the general, I guess, aesthetics of the production, there are a lot of spots of deja vu, whether it be on "Nil by Mouth" or "Scandinavia". Sometimes the bits of instrumentation in the Alchemist's beats are just way too faint, dodgy, and wallpaper to provide that strong of a backbone or structure to some of these tracks, like with the bland and dusty keys and weary woodwinds on "Glue Traps" that I talked about earlier. It's just a beat that I feel like I'm slowly tuning out, especially when we get to the point where Quelle Chris starts rapping.

There are some instrumentals where each moving part just feels so weirdly paired, like on "You Know My Body", where the singular piano notes and pumping rhythms in 3/4 just seem to have so little to do with one another. The combination is, like, random.

Now, don't get me wrong, I do think there are some standout instrumentals on Mercy for sure. Again, the intro is strong. I also love the super trippy keys and synth layers on "Peshawar". And with "Dogeared", the moody, droning layers of keys and reedy tones is not only hypnotic and alluring, but just total bliss. The smudginess of how the chord progression moves is really intriguing as well. If only more beats were as intricate and as colorful and emotionally impactful as this one. And look, for what it is, with "Moonbow", the beat here is like a chipmunk soul masterclass.

Beyond this, I will also say the features on this thing are hit or miss, too. While I do really love Quelle Chris's work, generally, I think he failed to really leave much of an impression on the two tracks where he was brought on. And Earl Sweatshirt's performance on "California Games", frankly, is even more disappointing. When he came in just rambling immediately off the bat with no real tempo or structure or flow to what he was saying, for a good half of his performance, I thought, surely he's just warming up and eventually bringing us to a point where he will lock in and really bring us something. But no, his whole performance feels sleepy as hell, passes by like the breeze. I would say this is an issue for this particular track, generally; all of the changes instrumentally and also from rapper to rapper, going from E L U C I D to billy as well. It's like each shift happens with no rhyme or reason.

Again, lack of structure on this track and some others too, for some reason – coherent structure, I should say – because on this track, there are a lot of changes, there are a lot of alterations, but they don't really add to the song all that much. When we're not getting that, we're getting tracks like "Super Nintendo", where the faint loops and synth leads stagnate pretty fast and bring this record to a very uneventful and tedious finish, even if I do like the dark, nostalgic vibes that are going on in E L U C I D's and billy's Verses here.

So yeah, overall with Mercy, I do think there are some decent highlights in the tracklist here and there, especially toward the front end and middle. But the record overall is not that consistent, features a super weak finish, very few exciting or impactful features.

And while across the record, I do I think billy's and E L U C I D's lyricism and rapping most certainly held up and stayed as quality as I would want and expect, generally, I can also hear that, too, on any number of other projects they have dropped, records where all other surrounding factors are of better quality, which is why I'm feeling a strong 6 on this one, I think.

Anthony Fantano, Armand Hammer, Forever.