Erykah Badu and the Alchemist Deliver on Fans’ Hopes

Erykah Badu albums are like fanciful piñatas. The draw is that you never know what you’re going to get. It’s a given that Erykah’s offbeat treats will be healthy and spirit-saving. Her inability to stay in one place, artistically speaking, all but ensures that each new project will give you life in new and emphatic ways. The Texan artist’s last proper album, 2010’s incredible New Amerykah Part Two (Return of the Ankh), flaunted the subversive single “Window Seat,” a respect-my-space sound-off that felt like self-care. Her only major release since then was a mixtape: 2015’s delirious But You Caint Use My Phone, which brimmed with affirmative heaters that wonderfully interrogated screen-staring. In her long interim between releases, Erykah’s guest spots furthered that provocative tradition, adding some earthy energetics (and an aside about veganism) to Teyana Taylor’s 2020 slow-burner “Lowkey,” and an enticing hook championing humanism on South Korean rapper RM’s inventive 2022 hit “Yun.”

Unsurprisingly, fans were ecstatic about the prospect of a new Erykah Badu album produced by the underground savant the Alchemist. When the L.A.-based boom-bap emissary posted Instagram pictures of himself with Erykah in the studio in December 2024, his comments were flooded with a litany of fire-emoji salutes. A few months after that, in March 2025, anticipatory headlines circulated when the 55-year-old singer told Billboard that a new album was in the works. That summer, she and the Alchemist embarked on a North American tour, performing new songs to dumbstruck fans who had to deposit their phones in locked Yondr pouches as if it were a tricked-out Dave Chappelle special.

Now, more than a year later, Before the World Blows: The Abi & Alan Experiment is finally here. And it’s definitely worth the delay. These 16 slaps are lucid and adventurous, featuring random Jay Electronica warblings, DJ Quik rhythms, and a couple of surprisingly appropriate Westside Gunn vignettes. This is Erykah’s best full-length since 2008’s capacious New Amerykah Part One (4th World War), showcasing the Alchemist’s strongest productions since his 2022 collabo with Roc Marciano, The Elephant Man’s Bones. Alluringly, Before the World Blows is a jolt of pure sprezzatura from two of the game’s most consummate analog devotees. It’s a surly trip that’s all about enjoying the messy moments of life before everything goes to shit.

Anyone could guess going into this album that Erykah’s sticking points are groupthink, conformity, and phone obsession. But far from being a joy-killer, she’s guided by inventiveness and levity. While A.I. is an exasperating boogeyman, the video for the stellar single “Next 2 U” features A.I.-enhanced art. That artistic gambit feels playfully tongue-in-cheek when tons of folks would rather use A.I. to find out how to store cut carrots in the fridge. If anything, Erykah’s project is relatably of the moment.

That her art is grounded in an all-too-human space has been clear since her insightful 1997 debut, Baduizm, which alerted the mainstream to the epochal, incense-and-headwrap preferences she’d developed years earlier amid Brooklyn’s grassroots, open-mic milieu. And it wouldn’t be surprising if the healing-centered lyrics to Before the World Blows’ buoyant single “Witch Doctor” inherit their piquancy from Erykah’s real-life practices as a chakra reader. In any case, her confident claim that “I know how to break that curse,” over the Alchemist’s booming, lo-fi canvas, feels like a mighty soul cleanse, while making it clear that the media’s 24/7 barrage of skullduggery is essentially witchcraft.

But the life-comes-at-you-fast aspect of having your nose wide open also registers here. The Steve Lacy-assisted “To the Moon (Plan C)” finds Erykah cooing, “Fly with me beyond the ocean/That is what I’m hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping.” Her voice is full of eager glee, and the panting, easy way in which she repeats “hoping” over the Alchemist’s floor-cracking snares feels like infatuation amplified by breezy uncertainty. The courtship-to-wake-up-call dynamic hits later in the first verse, when Erykah croons, “Now I think my period’s late,” before declaring that “What I say is what I create,” suggesting that her head-over-heels chatter invoked a straight-up grown-folks situation. It’s a whip-smart take on Adulting 101, and one of the best songs on the album.

Other gems include the crystalline “They Ain’t You,” with its smoky refrains recalling peak Badu anthems like “Orange Moon” and “Next Lifetime,” and the unquenchable “Crossfade.” The latter’s folky, DJ Quik-enhanced palette somehow invokes both Outkast and Pink Moon-era Nick Drake, making way for her diffident Chaka moans and squirmy vulnerability. “Breezy” — all spiffy pianos and Liverpool charm — is decidedly different from anything in Erykah’s or the Alchemist’s oeuvres. And “No I.D.,” named after the Chicago producer behind Jay-Z’s 4:44 and more, is a trenchant ode to boom-bap, wherein Erykah spazzes out and puts her bid in for funky new beats: “If Alchemist don’t come through for me/I’ma get a beat from No I.D.” It’s refreshing not only to hear Erykah Badu revive that velvet, Billie Holiday-inspired affectation here, but also pop all manner of cash shit over a ready barrage of Westside Gunn ad-libs — all while acknowledging the reverent aesthetic that’s instrumental to her choicest songs.

While “Black Box,” a croon-less jeremiad against smartphones, feels like a letdown, the moving “I Know That Man” is a bona fide heart-puller. Here, Badu follows a canny Earl Sweatshirt verse with a soul-soothing proclamation that “I wanna be seen as good/In the eyes of that which created us,” immediately inspiring goosebumps. Before the World Blows provides the kind of ambitious surprises you can savor for a plethora of lifetimes.