Audiopile Review: We Buy Diabetic Test Strips is, without a doubt, the most hotly anticipated rap album of 2023, coming two years on from Armand Hammer’s breakthrough album with the Alchemist, Haram, and followed by acclaimed solo albums from both ELUCID and billy woods. We are happy to report that the duo retain the crown as underground rap’s finest and most sonically advanced group. Armand Hammer, while ostensibly a duo, has always felt more like an extended universe, with woods and ELUCID acting as the gravitational centre, continuously able to draw in a perfectly matched set of guest vocalists and producers needed to form each album. Production-wise, they enlist the help of longtime associates like Kenny Segal, Steel Tipped Dove, JPEGMAFIA, and Preservation, but they also welcome new collaborators EL-P, DJ Haram of 700 Bliss and Black Noi$e (Early Sweatshirt/FlySiifu), each easily slotting easily into the Armand Hammer universe. The beats here don’t sound futuristic so much as they sound like they’re from another dimension—the duo have always had an incredible ear for sourcing unconventional beats to match their indelible flows, and Diabetic Test Strips is no exception, in fact, it’s the new high-water mark. Comparable to their previous genre-redefining albums like Rome or Shrines, there isn’t a singular sound that ties the record together, instead the album works like a tightly packed bomb of leftfield beats that generally eschew simple loops in favour of atmospheric tension. What does tie the record together is woods and ELUCID ability to cut through the thickness with their dense verbiage and relentless flow, flipping verses that alternate between gut punches, complex and clever crumb trails, vivid imagery, or just downright hilarious (“I’d rather be co-dependents than co-defendants”, “Ain’t had an apple since the 8th grade”). Plenty of guest turns on the mic to counterbalance the duo’s forceful blasts, with complimentary appearances from Pink Siifu, Junglepussy, Moor Mother, Curly Castro, and Soul Glo’s Pierce Jordan. We Buy Diabetic Test Strips is simultaneously confounding and totally absorbing, each listen peeling back a new layer to unravel, an intricate that we’ll come back to again and again for years to come. Not just the best hip-hop record so far this year, unlikely be topped in the few months we have left, but easily one of the best in the past two decades. 10/10.

New York’s most heralded underground rap act of last 5 years are returning with their first release on Fat Possum Records.