Armand Hammer (the duo of billy woods & ELUCID) released one of our favorite albums of 2020 and The Alchemist entirely produced two of our favorite albums of 2020 (and had a hand in producing a few others), so it’s very exciting to learn that Armand Hammer and The Alchemist will put out a collaborative album, Haram, on March 26 via Backwoodz Studioz. Even more exciting: guests include Earl Sweatshirt, Quelle Chris, Curly Castro (ShrapKnel), Amani, Fielded, and Kayana. (Several of those, including Earl, were on Armand Hammer’s 2020 album, and Earl also released the excellent Alchemist-produced single “Whole World” last year.)

The production description reads:

Haram is a mercurial collaboration between incendiary rap duo Armand Hammer, and living legend The Alchemist. For the first time ELUCID and billy woods have crafted an album with a single producer and the result is extraordinary. With their unmatched penchant for stirring imagery and incisive storytelling, the two rappers dive into an ocean of Alchemist’s creation: warmly inviting on the surface, black and bone-crushingly cold at depth. Haram is a collection of the profane and the pure; a reminder that that which is forbidden is also sacrosanct.

The artists are joined by their friends and fellow travelers on this journey. KAYANA’s golden voice upps the wattage on “Black Sunlight,” while Fielded’s sultry alto gets chopped and screwed on “Aubergine”. Earl Sweatshirt makes a sun-soaked appearance, while Curly Castro and Amani mix like ice and salt on Brooklyn sidewalks and Quelle Chris, as always, finds a pocket all his own. Still, there is a natural rapport that belies the New York-to-Los Angeles-and-back nature of the project, allowing Haram to be more than the sum of its parts, however impressive those parts may be. This isn’t just the genre’s most insistent contemporary voices paired with arguably its best producer. This is when you buy a beautiful house only to discover, hidden behind a heavy bookcase, a stairway twisting up and away into the darkness.

Various pre-order options are available at the Backwoodz website. Artwork and tracklist below.

No music is out from the album yet, but while you wait, revisit Armand Hammer’s 2020 album Shrines:

Haram Tracklist
Sir Benni Miles
Roaches Don’t Fly
Black Sunlight featuring KAYANA
Indian Summer
Aubergine featuring Fielded
God’s Feet
Peppertree
Scaffolds
Falling Out The Sky featuring Earl Sweatshirt
Wishing Bad featuring Curly Castro & Amani
Chicharrones featuring Quelle Chris
Squeegee
Robert Moses
Stonefruit

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10 Best Rap Albums of 2020

See the full top 50 here.