Haram. Forbidden. Haram presents itself as “a collection of the profane and the pure,” showing off the highs and lows of growing up in poverty, American life, and manhood. The album accomplishes this lofty task by stacking dense verses performed by Armand Hammer (rapper duo billy woods and Elucid) over luscious beats by legendary West Coast producer The Alchemist, with features from Earl Sweatshirt, Quelle Chris, and others. This concoction of elements leads to an album with a unique dissonance between how beautiful the songs sound, and how intensely morose the lyrics are.

The first thing anyone listening to this album will notice, is the album art. The artwork may be divisive, but I think it is greatly successful. Some may interpret the pigs to be cops, which would be in line with the lyrics Chicharrones, as well as continuing the theme from Shrines of having cops on the cover. Others may see it as a simple visual metaphor for the concept of Haram, as it is something which is literally Haram in Islam, but also grotesque to look at, giving it a literal forbidden feeling as you don’t want to look it. These are both valid interpretations, but I see the two pigs as being billy woods and Elucid, being so consumed by a life of doing forbidden acts, they are left feeling dead inside, a theme explored throughout the album.

Haram’s first line is something of a mission statement. “Dreams is dangerous, linger like angel dust, ain’t no angels harboring, ain’t no saving us, ain’t no slaving us”. Everything in this album was always destined to happen. “Sir Benni Miles” later delves into a major theme of the album: regret. Billy woods paints the picture of being kept up at night, stirred by some failure in the past, with only the solace of pills to temporarily forget. “Don’t make a keepsake out of grief”.

This leads into “Roaches Don’t Fly”, a heavy verse from Elucid tells of the dynamics of a low income neighborhood. Gun violence, racism, poverty, all things many have to face the reality of daily. All of this over a sparse beat capped with a perfectly placed guitar solo at the songs climax, one of the strongest beats on the record.

While billy woods’ verse on “Indian Summer” may be one of the more straightforward on the record, it’s nonetheless in line with the albums themes and paints a vivid picture. Woods tells of his teenage years, when he had to hustle in secret. Using a clever double entendre in “came home stinkin’ of gas”, woods describes how he used lawn mowing as a front to sell drugs on the side. He tells of the thrill of keeping all this money a secret, perhaps the only time to that point in his life he even had excess money. But he couldn’t dare share what he was doing with his family; what he’s doing is Haram.

Falling Out The Sky is a truly amazing track. Earl starts off the song, introducing the themes of reminiscing and regret: “My father body swollen behind my eyes, I ain’t cry for him in time to return solar, We on the ride forward, the reverse not workin’” Woods then comes in with a stellar verse, in which he ponders various memories about the West Coast, effortlessly connecting different memories and pieces of time together, capping it off with the very telling, “It felt sleepy at night, but I like that, Felt like you could relax, Like you could disappear, Like I wasn’t surrounded by the past”. Woods’ verse is followed by a sample of David Lynch discussing day dreams, and this may be my favorite moment of the album. Not only did billy woods create a perfect visualization of him daydreaming in his verse, he does it in the style of a David Lynch film, bending and combining various planes of time and reality together to create a surreal yet cohesive experience. As a side note, I love David Lynch, he’s my favorite director, I strongly recommend checking out Inland Empire and Eraserhead.

Billy woods’ verse on Squeegee is one of the more depressing on the record. It tells the story of a young man who lives a healthy life. Working out, having a healthy sleep schedule, cutting out meat and not smoking. That is, not smoking except one night he sees some old friends and takes a few hits. He walks home, paranoid of being followed and killed. Although the track never directly says it, billy woods implies this person is murdered with phrases like “head fish rot” and “smell like the morgue”. “The taste in his mouth just like before”, may be a continuation of a theme explored on Stonefruit, where woods compares the moment of death to the moment of birth.

“Robert Moses” starts off by asking a very revealing question. “Can God forgive us, for what we have done to this world?” This question could be seen as the central thesis of this entire album. Can God forgive the duo for breaking Haram throughout their life? Can God forgive the people in power who have been systematically oppressing Black people for centuries? Can God forgive the perpetrators of gang violence? These are the heavy questions woods and Elucid are dealing with throughout the albums, alongside candid representations of how asking these questions leave them feeling.

The album closes out on Stonefruit, a perfect outro track which encapsulates all of the themes of the album. Elucid sings “I don’t wanna lose control, But I can’t grab my space to grow, Comfort’s dull but gets us through, I got so much left to undo,” poetically describing a lot of complex feelings at once. Sometimes we’re held back by things we have no control over. Sometimes life is dull and hard to slog through. Sometimes we fuck up and have to live with that, forever. Billy woods goes deeper into this. The harsh realities of life, the constant memories bombarding him from the past, have finished him. Billy woods exposes himself so deeply that there’s none of him left, he’s nothing but a pile of bones. “The pavement gave way to a thicket of thorns, Where the body lay naked as the day I was born.” Woods is empty by the time we reach the end of the album, stripped bare by all that has happened in his life. You can try to love him, but he’s all but a memory at that point, “She dragged the bones home and built a bed, She drank Rosé out the skull, but held it gentle as my living head.”

Listening to this album is a lot like a journey. It prods the listener to come back to it, to try and decipher more of the messages, more of the themes. And as you do, not only do you understand and appreciate the lyrics more, you notice the tiny details The Alchemist masterfully uses, almost inaudible guitar riffs, changing drum patterns, additions and removals of instruments, that prove that this record is as dense sonically as it is lyrically. The end result is a masterpiece; an album that’s tormented by the past and desperate to warn the listener of the pitfalls of life.