billy woods (Armand Hammer) Debut New Zealand Shows Announced

One half of experimental hip-hop mavericks Armand Hammer (with ELUCID), NYC rapper billy woods is hitting Aotearoa this winter, with a Tāmaki Makarau headline event locked in for Neck of the Woods plus San Fran in Pōneke. Collaborator with such fellow heavyweights as Earl Sweatshirt, Moor Mother, JPEGMAFIA, El-P, Quelle Chris, The Alchemist, DJ Haram, Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring and that's just the tip of the iceberg, the lyrically and sonically fearless artist's solo work spans ten studio long players over more than two decades, while his collaborative output (notably including 2020's Brass with Moor Mother) achieves mind-boggling scale and complexity.

Prolific as ever during the past twelve months, the underground hip-hop star has reaped gushing praise for both his latest solo album GOLLIWOG — hailed by Pitchfork as "a visionary horrorcore record about the infinite ways people feel and respond to fear" — and Armand Hammer with The Alchemist's 2025 joint Mercy. billy woods' imminent arrival to NZ will be no less than an event, so be sure to pounce when tickets go live this week, Auckland event brought to you by WavyLand...

billy woods (Armand Hammer)

Friday 17th July - San Fran, Wellington 
Saturday 18th July - Neck Of The Woods, Auckland*

*WavyLand presales from 10am, Wednesday 13th May to 10am, Thursday 14th May
General on-sale from 10am, Thursday 14th May

Hit play on 'Born Alone' featuring Kenny Segal, from billy woods' new album GOLLIWOG...

Check out 'Dislocated' feat. ELUCID from GOLLIWOG...

Smash play on 'Laraaji' from Armand Hammer and The Alchemist's 2025 album Mercy...

Press release:

For billy woods, literate rhymes and inventive flows are littered through all his works. So much so, it’s hard to pinpoint his exact genre. But for the New York-based rapper, his music career began in the early 2000s, however, he was largely unknown until 2012 after the release of his solo album History Will Absolve Me. Since then, woods has gone onto release music under Armand Hammer – a collaborative project with ELUCID – and an array of solo albums like Today, I Wrote Nothing (2015), Maps (2023) and more.

His latest solo release – the 2025 album GOLLIWOG – has been deemed his most experimental yet. So much so, Pitchfork described it as “a twisty horrorcore masterpiece where history and nightmares are indistinguishable” and a “perfect showcase for his craft”. It mixes horror, humour, surrealism and Afropessimism into the one work: think African zombies, time traveling trap cars, malevolent ragdolls and a dying Frantz Fanon.