Armand Hammer began Snakes & Ladders knowing which song would close it. billy woods and ELUCID started “if we must die” late last year; woods says he recognised it as the finale from the outset. The rest of the record still had to be written.
Released November 11 through Backwoodz, the record follows Mercy, their 2025 collaboration with the Alchemist. The production credits are more crowded this time: clipping., Preservation, Kenny Segal and Saint Abdullah & Eomac are among the contributors. But the most revealing account of its making concerns two rappers trying to work out how to follow each other.
In Paul Thompson’s POW interview, woods describes ELUCID choosing the beat for “Jet Magazine.” He liked it, though he might not have picked it himself. After hearing ELUCID’s verse over the phone, he went back to his desk to find an approach that would prepare the way for it. He also says the pair recorded more songs together in the same room than on any previous Armand Hammer album.
Kenny Segal leaves the drums out of “Send for Me”; “Nightswim” brings guitars into the picture. With the backing changing from track to track, woods’s account of working out his place on “Jet Magazine” becomes especially useful. The production credits name the contributors; his story explains some of the work that happens after a beat is chosen.
“Deadbolts,” produced by clipping., introduces a different kind of exchange. ELUCID told Thompson that his young son had asked whether he was happy. The question stayed with him, and he asked the child to repeat it for the recording.
ELUCID says he was happy. What unsettled him was the possibility that his son had noticed something he had missed. On “Deadbolts,” the child asks again; ELUCID is left wondering what prompted the question in the first place.