Ever-prolific, ELUCID is an independent icon in the midst of a peerless run. I Guess U Had To Be There follows ELUCID’s “enthralling” (MOJO) 2024 solo album REVELATOR. Pitchfork described it as “soul food for those who know a better world is possible if we’re willing to fight for it,” while The New York Times, in naming REVELATOR one of their Best Albums Of 2024, called it “a dense, overdriven, fiercely abrasive album that cranks up the tradition of Public Enemy’s Bomb Squad productions for 21st-century impact.”

With Armand Hammer, he and billy woods keep delivering masterworks: 2025’s Mercy, produced by The Alchemist, marked “their seventh stellar album in a row” (The Quietus). The project was deemed “cinematic and unsettling in the best way possible” (HotNewHipHop) and “the type of free-flowing brilliance that can only spring forth when every artist involved is totally in sync” (FADER). 

Mercy was the first Armand Hammer album since 2023’s We Buy Diabetic Test Strips, a project that The Observer (UK) described as “an exceptional record that deserves your time and headphones” and The Line Of Best Fit deemed “their headiest and most impressive work thus far.” Meanwhile, Pitchfork  just included Armand Hammer’s 2017 album Rome in their 2025 list of The 100 Best Rap Albums Of All Time.