Wait For The Hex

Armand Hammer featuring Nosaj “Leopards”

Fat Albert Einstein’s track for “Leopards” feels unsteady and wild, it feels like you’re knowingly walking into dangerous territory. A lot of that is just that it’s built on a foundation of tinny hi-hat patter that signals anxiety and structural fragility, but it’s also in the way the main organ riff seems to lunge out menacingly and how the bass line seems to lurk around the beat rather than groove. The rappers in Armand Hammer take slightly different approaches to the beat: Billy Woods’ verse expands on the environment evoked by the track by fixating on specific scenery and grounding his story in Flatbush, Brooklyn before shifting into more overtly horrific imagery. Elucid’s verse leans into the unstable feel, packing his lines with quick-cut images like Ghostface, but letting his performance fall out of the groove as the music gets woozy.

Buy it from Bandcamp.