In an era where genre boundaries continue to blur, and where digital convenience often supersedes intentional craftsmanship, the collaboration between Erykah Badu and The Alchemist emerges not just as a musical event—but as a cosmic alignment. Their newly released single, “Next To You,” marks Badu’s first lead offering of the decade and the first taste of their forthcoming joint album titled Abi & Alan. For longtime fans of both artists, this is more than just a cross-genre experiment—it’s an intersection of two sonic mystics at the peak of their creative autonomy.

The Alchemist, long revered in the hip-hop underground for his dusty textures and chopped-soul beat alchemy (pun fully intended), teams up with Badu—high priestess of neo-soul, conceptualism, and psychedelic funk. The result? A hypnotic track that evokes smoky living rooms, incense spirals, ancestral memory, and inner-city jazz temples.

“Next To You”: A Spellbound Love Letter

The track “Next To You” opens with what feels like the shimmer of a dream—looped vibraphone notes and soft Rhodes keys melting into a beat so minimal it seems to levitate. Then comes Badu’s voice, intimate and airy, as if sung into a lover’s ear at midnight. She doesn’t just sing; she glides, layering her vocals into a cocoon of quiet reverence.

The Alchemist’s beat is characteristically unrushed, rooted in vinyl hiss and minimalist drum taps that allow Badu to float. But unlike his more rigid, boom-bap oriented work with the likes of Freddie Gibbs or Earl Sweatshirt, here Al opens space—space for silence, breath, and the slow-burning eroticism that defines Badu’s vocal style.

Lyrically, “Next To You” is deceptively simple—a meditation on proximity and presence. Badu croons:

“I don’t want to chase you / I just want to sit next to you”
“Let the sun melt through / I become the mood”

It’s love stripped of performance. Intimacy without fireworks. The song is less about seduction than it is about alignment—an aural rendering of two energies existing in harmony.

Abi & Alan: Names as Narrative

The title of the forthcoming project—Abi & Alan—carries literary weight. “Abi” is short for Erykah Badu’s birth name, Erica Abi Wright, while “Alan” references The Alchemist’s given name, Alan Maman. Choosing their birth names as the title is a significant artistic gesture—it signals a level of vulnerability and raw authorship. These are not alter-egos or stage personas; this is Erykah and Alan, stripped to essence.

It also recalls the tradition of jazz duos naming records after themselves (think Ella & Louis or Betty & Roy), invoking a timelessness and non-commercial intimacy. This album is not about charts. It’s about chemistry.

Flow: Alley-Oops and Isms

According to a press release, The Alchemist described their creative process as a kind of musical basketball—he “tossed the beats,” and Badu “made the alley-oop.” It’s a collaboration built not on over-arranged ideas, but intuitive flow.

Yet Badu’s involvement goes far beyond vocals. She wrote, composed, arranged, and co-produced the song, infusing it with what she calls her “izm”—a word she’s long used to describe the spiritual, sensory signature she leaves on any work she touches. In this sense, “Next To You” isn’t a feature. It’s co-creation.

In a world where artists often phone in verses across email threads, this kind of intimate, hands-on studio work feels almost revolutionary.

Context: Where Jazz, Soul, and Hip-Hop Speak

“Next To You” joins a long lineage of soul-infused hip-hop collabs—but rather than merely retrofitting soul samples onto a loop, Badu and Alchemist blur the instruments themselves. There’s no clear distinction between sampled texture and live play. It’s all vaporous, smudged, slightly out of time.

Literary parallels could be drawn here: this track is to pop music what Toni Morrison’s interior monologues are to prose—sensory, recursive, inward-facing. The song echoes the tradition of Sun Ra, J Dilla, Alice Coltrane, D’Angelo, and Madlib—all artists for whom time bends and feeling precedes form.

It’s also a spiritual cousin to Badu’s own Mama’s Gun and But You Caint Use My Phone, where groove meets stream-of-consciousness. From Alchemist’s side, it recalls Bo Jackson’s more introspective B-sides or the shadowy stillness of his work with Armand Hammer.

The Idea

In an industry rushing to chase virality, “Next To You” feels like a refusal to rush. It’s slow music for fast times. As such, it asserts a counter-narrative: artistry over algorithm.

For Badu, it’s a reentry after years of artistic quietude—her first lead single of the decade, and one that reasserts her as a producer and arranger, not just a performer. For The Alchemist, it’s another flex of versatility—moving from cryptic rap tapes to sensual soul-fusion without sacrificing his signature texture.

Together, they form something rare in 2025: a collaboration that doesn’t collapse under ego. There’s no center here. Just a shared gravitational field.

Impression

“Next To You” may be the opening track of Abi & Alan, but it already suggests that the project will not be a typical genre pastiche. It will likely be a slow-motion jazz album disguised as hip-hop, a love letter whispered through incense, a story told not in hooks, but in harmonic drift.

In its quietness, its self-possession, and its refusal to be loud, Badu and The Alchemist have crafted something sacred. It asks to be listened to alone, in candlelight, maybe with a window cracked. Not as background—but as breath.

The magic is not just in the beat or the voice. It’s in the space between them.

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