Armand Hammer - Half Measures
Armand Hammer is a project comprised of billy woods and Elucid, who often collaborate with one another on each other's individual efforts. This mixtape is pretty good, with some good rhymes and flow from both Elucid and woods. I'm not too surprised at woods's good verses as I haven't disliked anything I've heard from him, but on some tracks Elucid takes a swing and misses. That's not to say he doesn't have great verses, but just sayin'.
The production is interesting, somewhat more conventional than what woods often uses, but there is a lot of variety on the album, given that he works with several producers (who I'm too lazy to search right now, but I believe that Blockhead and Uncommon Nausea are in the mix) as opposed to his last album "Dour Candy". I think that billy woods works best with several producers to make a fresh album because of the diversity of his connections to the different styles of beats and such. I got this on bandcamp for free at the name your price option, but if the new album has the name your price option, I'm going to wait until I have enough money to make a fan's contributional price
. That being said, I will still stream it!
I think that Dour Candy is better than this though, while it stays on par with Elucid's side project Cult Favourite's album "For Madmen Only." There are guest appearances of emcees Curly Castro, Has-Lo, Faro, Rob Sonic, Moka Only, and Open Mike Eagle as well, all of which I had no complaints over, tbh. Great chemistry between everyone involved, and it really makes me excited for the full LP release from this duo.
I think that my opinion may grow more positive when I listen to this album a few more times, because several albums that I really enjoy have worked out that way, and billy woods is the epitome of this situation for me.
Here's where you can stream and/or download the album:
http://armandhammer.bandcamp.com/album/half-measures.