Erykah Badu Returns With Alchemist Album After 11 Years
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- Erykah Badu releases "Before the World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment," her first full-length project since the 2015 mixtape "But You Caint Use My Phone" — a collaboration with LA producer The Alchemist (Alan Maman)
- The Alchemist was a Cypress Hill roadie in 1997 who watched Badu perform nightly from the crowd on the Smokin' Grooves tour; he reconnected with her years later through a mutual friend named Cold Cris after DJing a party
- Badu became a certified doula in 2006 after sitting through a friend's 52-hour labor, has supported two mothers a year from 2001 to 2023, and also works as an end-of-life doula — with celebrity clients including Teyana Taylor and Summer Walker
- Badu rejects the "queen of neo-soul" crown she received after her 1997 debut Baduizm, saying she "denounced my throne" because she is "an ever-changing vessel" and didn't want to be pigeonholed by algorithms
- The album's central thread is gender politics, framed by Badu as wisdom for her two daughters — Puma (born 2004) and Mars (born 2009) — and "the daughters of the world" going through similar "initiations"
- Badu argues modern dating is "more transparent" rather than "more fractured," contending that vocabulary around "narcissism" and "ADHD" defines behaviors so heavily it limits self-acceptance — "we're pardoning behaviour by defining it"
- The album's closing track Black Box continues Badu's phone-themed work, framing smartphones as "our pseudo-husband and wife" and the first dopamine hit of each morning
Why it matters: A certified doula who has balanced birth and death work with her music career since 2001, Badu's framing of the album's gender-politics songs as messages to her two daughters reframes an 11-year gap between records as deliberate generational mentorship — not a hiatus.
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