and have revealed the full details of their highly anticipated joint album, titled ‘Before the World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment’.
Out this Friday via Young/Control Freaq Records, the co-produced project was recorded over 18 months between Dallas and Los Angeles. The result is a kaleidoscopic collision of two radical figures in music.
The Alchemist sent Erykah Badu a collection of instrumental beats, which she deconstructed and sculpted into tracks that felt uniquely hers, embellishing his warm, punchy samples with instruments from soft kalimba notes to immersive chords and drums.
Across 16 tracks Badu contemplates which parts of ourselves and our stories – love, innocence, dreams, memories, womanhood – are worth protecting before the world breaks and fragments.
Fluid and freeform, the album moves between soul, blues, funk, rock, jazz, and underground hip-hop. The narrative arc unfolds in four movements, charting the progression of self through the prisms of love, art, and identity, inviting us to sit with difficult feelings.
The album features , , , , Steve Lacy, Thundercat, Earl Sweatshirt and Kamasi Washington.
In the run up to album reveal, the duo shared the single ‘Witch Doctor’, and cryptic began appearing across Sydney, Melbourne, London, Paris, and New York City bearing the phrase “One More Song…”, accompanied by a code, that also appeared on placeholder album artwork, and the website www.b-t-w-b.com.
Today, the mystery deepens with the launch of BADU BURNER PHONE: “ONE MO ______ BEFORE THE WORLD BLOWS.”
Ahead of the album’s release, Badu is giving fans a direct line to the , with the chance to speak with her live via FaceTime or video call. By visiting www.b-t-w-b.com, fans can enter an interactive experience that unlocks a phone number through a series of challenges.
1. Echos
2. I Just Play A Part
3. Crossfade (feat. DJ Creole Princess, Westside Gunn, Joi)
4. Witch Doctor
5. Valentine (feat. DRAM)
6. Next 2 U
7. Love Me Not 8. Breezy
9. Abracadabra
10. To The Moon (Plan C) (feat. Steve Lacy)
11. They Ain’t You (feat. Thundercat)
12. What The People Say (Apostle 1)
13. Hot BiBi (Apostle 2)
14. No I.D. (feat. Westside Gunn)
15. I Know That Man (feat. Earl Sweatshirt)
16. Black Box (feat. Kamasi Washington)