Pochette de l'album. Control FREAQ Records
The wait is finally over. On Friday, August 28, 2026, Erykah Badu and The Alchemist release “Before the World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment,” their first fully collaborative album. For the Dallas singer, it is the first set of new songs since 2010’s “New Amerykah Part Two.” For the producer, it is one more reminder that he can grow a landmark record where no one saw it coming.
Sixteen years in the making, eighteen months in the studio
For a while it felt as though Erykah Badu might never put out another album. Since 1997’s “Baduizm,” she has helped shape the sound of modern soul, from “Mama’s Gun” to both volumes of “New Amerykah.” Yet on the studio front, the silence had stretched since 2010, broken only by the 2015 mixtape “But You Caint Use My Phone.” She never truly disappeared, of course—her live shows and her role as an elder figure for a whole scene kept her name in circulation—but a proper album felt like a distant prospect.
The Alchemist, by contrast, has never stopped working—a quiet architect of American rap behind some of the most acclaimed records of recent years, from his run with Freddie Gibbs to projects with Earl Sweatshirt and Boldy James. His signature is a certain kind of warmth: sample-based, hazy, unhurried, leaving room for a voice to breathe. On paper, few producers could suit Badu better.
The new album, sixteen tracks issued through Control FREAQ, is the product of eighteen months of shared sessions between Dallas and Los Angeles. Its subtitle, “The Abi and Alan Experiment,” borrows the nicknames the two artists gave each other—a way of flagging a lab record, conceived as a conversation rather than a simple run of songs.
The origin story has already become a small legend. It reportedly began with a remark—Badu saying she wanted to rap over Mobb Deep’s “The Realist,” an Alchemist beat. Once the pair were introduced, the idea of a single track grew into a full project, and then an album.
“Witch Doctor,” a video echoing “Window Seat”
The lead single, “Witch Doctor,” sets the tone. Its video, directed by and starring Badu herself, premiered at a one-off screening paired with her cult 2010 short film “Window Seat.” Sixteen years on, she returns to the same stretch of road with a changed gaze—a full-circle gesture that says everything about the distance travelled. Earlier tastes, such as “Next 2 U,” had already laid the ground.
A guest list that borders on the absurd
Around the duo, the announced guest list reads like a soul-and-hip-hop summit. Among the names:
- Westside Gunn and Earl Sweatshirt, two major voices of independent rap;
- Thundercat and Kamasi Washington, virtuosos out of the Los Angeles jazz and soul scene;
- Steve Lacy and DRAM, for the pop and R&B colour;
- singer Joi, a longtime ally of the Texan soul world.
The pairing is no accident: Badu had just lent her voice to “oh yeah?,” Steve Lacy’s third album. “Before the World Blows” extends that game of bridges between generations, with The Alchemist’s warm, dusty production as its through-line—hazy loops, plenty of space, and Badu’s voice sitting at the centre.
A comeback that matters for soul
Beyond the event itself, the record lands at a pivotal moment. After months marked by the resurgence of R&B and soul, carried by a new generation such as Ravyn Lenae, the return of a figure as foundational as Erykah Badu feels like a connecting thread between what soul was and what it is becoming. What remains is to hear, track by track, what this meeting of a voice that defined an era and one of the most admired producers of his time actually delivers. On paper, one of the most anticipated releases of the late summer.
