Armand Hammer, the New York duo of billy woods and ELUCID, surprise released their eighth studio album Snakes & Ladders today, Wednesday, November 11, 2026, through Backwoodz Studioz. The Armand Hammer new album arrived with no official advance notice, as Paste reported this morning, and it is out now on streaming services: Apple Music lists 16 songs in 43 minutes, released November 11, 2026.
There had been online chatter about a new Armand Hammer record in the past few days, Stereogum notes, but nothing was announced in advance, no single was worked and no rollout preceded it. The album simply landed, on the same day the duo plays Seattle. That is the whole campaign: the record itself, and three live dates to close the week.
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Armand Hammer New Album Snakes & Ladders Tracklist
The full 16 song sequence, with the production credit carried on each track, runs as follows: Deadbolts (clipping.), Send for Me (Kenny Segal), Lock Out/Tag Out (Sebb Bash), Jet Magazine (Mekala Session and Karado), Nightswim (Kenny Segal), TimesTables (Jeff Markey), don’t say it if it isn’t true (Sebb Bash), Gravity (Child Actor), Vespers (Animoss), Dragon Teeth (Theravada), Incidentals (Petter Eldh and Mekala Session), Graveside (DJ Haram, Eomac and Saint Abdullah), Dogville (Kenny Segal and Messiah Musik), Assembly Lines (Preservation), Risk ($ilkMoney and Steel Tipped Dove) and if we must die (Sebb Bash). Listen to the full album here:
The structure is the story inside the tracklist. No guest vocalists appear on the record, and the production changes hands on nearly every song, with most of those producers drawn from the duo’s own past collaborators. Kenny Segal, who produced woods’ best known solo work, touches three tracks. Sebb Bash, ELUCID’s partner on their collaborative album I Guess You Had To Be There earlier this year, also touches three. Preservation, clipping., Animoss and Child Actor each take one. Two voices, one rotating cast of producers, and the chemistry has to come from the writing.
A Dense Record, Built On Surveillance And Home
Paste hears a dense, melodic record that leans into atmospherics and poetry, weaving together Flock cameras, AI chatbot interviewers, CCTV and crying in the club. The spoken word intro to Vespers sets the tone early:
My friend, they don’t care if you’re an individualist, a leftist, a rightist, a shithead, or a snake.
The closing track’s title carries its own source: if we must die takes its name from Claude McKay’s 1919 sonnet, and the poem itself is heard near the end of the record, a century old vow closing a 2026 album. Stereogum, which had an advance copy for a few days, calls it a heady and disorienting work that digs into the furthest out parts of the duo’s style, while being careful to say a record this dense cannot be judged on a first listen. That caution is part of the act’s standing: every Armand Hammer album asks for repeat listening, with double and triple meanings packed into the verses, and Snakes & Ladders is built the same way, jazz inflected and relentlessly syncopated, per Paste’s first account.
The Follow Up To Mercy
The release follows last year’s Mercy, the duo’s second full length collaboration with The Alchemist, which landed at No. 7 on Paste’s Best Rap Albums of 2025 list, with its song Dogeared, featuring Kapwani, finishing in the top ten of Paste’s Best Songs of 2025. In between, the pair played a Tiny Desk concert this past summer, ELUCID released his Sebb Bash collaboration, and woods stayed present across the independent rap world through guest work, in what had been, until today, the rare year with no new billy woods album. Snakes & Ladders closes that gap as a duo record instead, their eighth studio album together since Race Music.
Three Dates Close The Week
The duo celebrates the surprise release on stage tonight, Wednesday, November 11, at The Crocodile in Seattle. The short closing run continues Friday, November 13 at the Marquis Theatre in Denver, then wraps Sunday, November 15 with a record release show at Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, where Sideshow, Mike Ladd, Sha Ray and DJ Haram, Kenny Segal and Curly Castro join the bill. For a group that let an entire album arrive without warning this morning, the week ends the same way the record starts: in a room, in front of people, with no advance notice left to give.
