The Alchemist

May 28, 2020 at PDT

Alfredo

Midwestern by birth and temperament, Freddie Gibbs has always seemed a little wary of talking himself up—he’s more show than tell. But between 2019’s Madlib collaboration (Bandana) and the Alchemist-led Alfredo, what wasn’t clear 10 years ago is crystal now: Gibbs is in his own class. The wild, shape-shifting flow of “God Is Perfect,” the chilling lament of “Skinny Suge” (“Man, my uncle died off a overdose/And the fucked-up part of that is I know I supplied the n***a that sold it”), a mind that flickers with street violence and half-remembered Arabic, and beats that don’t bang so much as twinkle, glide, and go up like smoke. Alfredo is seamless, seductive, but effortless, the work of two guys who don’t run to catch planes. On “Something to Rap About,” Gibbs claims, “God made me sell crack so I had something to rap about.” But the way he flows now, you get the sense he would’ve found his way to the mic one way or the other.

10 Tracks

March 30, 2023 at PDT

The Great Escape

Two of hip-hop’s most prolific contemporary artists, laidback rapper Larry June and production vet The Alchemist, seem to have plotted The Great Escape for some time. If prior co-credited appearances on projects by mutuals Curren$y and Jay Worthy signaled their clear studio chemistry, 2022’s Spaceships on the Blade standout “Breakfast in Monaco” left little to no doubt that the two absolutely needed to drop a proper album together. Following the anticipatory loosie teases of “60 Days” and “89 Earthquake,” this 15-track effort exceeds expectations by formally bringing June’s entrepreneurial ethos of health and wealth into ALC’s unparalleled sonic world-building.

Visions of luxury cars, presidential suites, and, of course, fresh-squeezed orange juice run through June lyrics over the grind dates “Porsches in Spanish” and “Turkish Cotton.” The pair’s no-expense-spared journey takes them to Detroit, where Boldy James spits confidently through a perpetual snarl on “Art Talk” and Big Sean speaks on the long game with unapologetic frankness on “Palisades, CA.” Elsewhere, East Coast renaissance man Action Bronson drops a dizzyingly reference-heavy verse on the jazz-infused “Solid Plan,” while Wiz Khalifa elucidates his core values on the psychedelic soul-powered “What Happened to the World?”

15 Tracks

February 17, 2022 at PST

Continuance

Veteran New Orleans rapper Curren$y brags different. It’s maybe the singular thing that protects him from an inadvertently dismissive label like “everyman MC.” When he talks about about how well he’s doing—as he does early and often across Continuance, his collaborative album with producer The Alchemist—he does so in a way that bypasses leaving a listener feeling inadequate. Curren$y’s raps are a celebration of taste—in automobiles, clothing, jewelry, weed, women—and you can hear, in that signature laidback flow set to expertly chopped jazz loops, an implied invitation for you to join him. The guests here don’t necessarily have the same reputation for affability (Boldy James, Havoc, Styles P, Babyface Ray, to name a few), but they sound just as happy as Curren$y to be rapping over The Alchemist’s production.

13 Tracks

October 5, 2023 at PDT

VOIR DIRE

The question of whether you want an MC like Earl Sweatshirt and a producer like The Alchemist to test each other’s limits is on some level an existential one: Like, isn’t the fact that the dreamlike flights of VOIR DIRE feel like comfort food a testament to how much they’ve already stretched our conception of hip-hop?

Ten years out from his first “real” album (2013’s Doris), Earl sounds grateful, fulfilled, and yet no less enigmatic than when he was a kid, holding space for a history of Black diasporic art from Martinican poet Aimé Césaire to the Swazi-Xhosa South African pop legend Miriam Makeba without sacrificing the hermetic quality that made him so appealing in the first place. In Vince Staples, he continues to find the straight-talking foil he needs (“The Caliphate,” “Mancala”), and in Al a producer who can nudge him just a little closer to the hallelujahs he’s either too cool or evasive to embrace (“Mancala”). And at 26 minutes, the whole thing easily asks to be played again.

11 Tracks

August 12, 2021 at PDT

Bo Jackson

It’s likely that only diehard Boldy James fans understand how perfect a complement he is to the Griselda Records roster. The Detroit MC’s focus has always been lyrically proficient street rap, but in 2020 alone, his ear for production would manifest collaborative tapes with beloved Mobb Deep collaborator The Alchemist (The Price of Tea in China), jazz musician Sterling Toles (Manger on McNichols), social media content creator Jay Versace (The Versace Tape), and fashion label/production collective Real Bad Man. The man likes to rap. And if there’s one thing Griselda doesn’t do, it’s hold back projects where their MCs go off.

James’ first release of 2021, Bo Jackson, clearly fits the mold. Look no further than the album opener “Double Hockey Sticks” for Donald Goines-vivid streetlife scenarios unfurled in James’ signature deadpan: “My bitch scored and hit a game-changer/I made her transport the work in her Keyshia Ka'oir waist trainer/Say she gon' leave me and I can’t blame her/’Cause I was cutting up my side bitch raw with the same razor,” he raps. The Alchemist is, here, who he was for The Price of Tea in China and the James/Alc collaborative project that preceded that, 2019’s Boldface: a producer whose one-of-a-kind loops bring the best out of an MC who never really needed the help.

14 Tracks

December 16, 2021 at PST

Super Tecmo Bo

9 Tracks

March 29, 2020 at PDT

LULU

“I’m from where the kids don’t get a new jacket in fall/Roach in the cereal and every spoon black in the drawer.” Good to see you too, Conway the Machine. Really, could these guys get any grimier? How about making your mom sell food to afford your coffin (“14 KI’s”)? Or scattering your body across the grass like leaves in fall (“Calvin”)? As with all Conway’s best stuff—and the best of the Shady Records-affiliated Griselda crew in general—the violence here isn’t explosive or cathartic but atmospheric, hypnotic, the flicker of a badly wired lightbulb or a weird hum from the apartment downstairs. And it’s hard to think of a better match for the Buffalo rapper's unhurried slur than LA producer The Alchemist, whose beats don’t boom or bap so much as creep, grimace, and circle in the waters like a bad mood.

7 Tracks

November 21, 2019 at PST

Lamb Over Rice

A big part of Action Bronson’s appeal comes from his relishable food references, typically delivered atop one another like layers of an oversized bodega sandwich born of his free-associating Queens-bred mindset. With a title instantly recognizable to any New Yorker who’s ever tasted the anti-hangover saving grace of one of the city’s ubiquitous halal carts, Lamb Over Rice makes for another tasty snack from the red-bearded rapper. Here, he teams exclusively with The Alchemist, the longtime cohort and legendary production pal who worked with him on 2012’s beloved Rare Chandeliers mixtape. Composed of new material and vintage loosies, the criminally short, wonderfully varied project gratifies from end to end, with the cinematic yet minimalist “Accoutrements” sharing space with the ambling lounge jazz of “Dmtri.”

7 Tracks

April 18, 2011 at PDT

Covert Coup

Atmospheric but still banging, Covert Coup is the debut collaboration from a duo who’ve evolved unpredictably: Curren$y, the No Limit trenchman-turned-stoner-rap auteur, and The Alchemist, whose eerie Y2K-era boom-bap beats became increasingly abstracted. The Alchemist’s production is, at once, restless and dreamlike on woozy sketches like “Smoke Break” and “Success Is My Cologne,” and Curren$y’s rhymes are loose but still lucid. Check the sudden beat switches on “The Type,” making way for a rugged verse from Mobb Deep’s Prodigy.

10 Tracks

July 9, 2020 at PDT

The Price of Tea in China (Deluxe Edition)

16 Tracks

August 25, 2022 at PDT

The Elephant Man's Bones

It can be unwise to play favorites in the music biz, but maybe nobody told that to The Alchemist. “I really made an album with my favorite rapper and it drops tonight at midnight,” the producer tweeted ahead of the release of his and Roc Marciano’s The Elephant Man’s Bones. “I’m tripping.” Hempstead, Long Island-originating Marciano is no stranger to peer adulation, however. His time as a recording artist dates at least as far back as a stint with Busta Rhymes’ late-’90s Flipmode Squad collective, but the name he has today was made from the string of gritty and impressive solo projects he released across the 2010s. You do need a specific kind of ear to fully appreciate the MC.

Roc Marciano raps in the kind of street code that reveals itself to be genius to those who can grasp its nuances. Take this couplet from The Elephant Man’s Bones’ “Daddy Kane”: “I been getting off that soft white long before shorties was rocking Off-White/Water-colored ice, I call it Walter White/Walk with me like a dog might, I got 44 bulldogs, you ain’t got a dog in the fight.” The bars themselves are less complex than they are both slimy and razor-sharp. These are raps to be heeded and, maybe more importantly, enjoyed at a safe distance. Unless, of course, you’re The Alchemist—or album guests Action Bronson, Boldy James, Ice-T, or Knowledge the Pirate—in which case you can’t wait to add some of your own ingredients to Marciano’s cauldron.

14 Tracks

December 28, 2023 at PST

Hall & Nash 2

Hall & Nash 2 plays sequel to the rare early release that diehards everywhere associate with the beginnings of Westside Gunn and Conway the Machine’s Griselda Records. On its follow-up, the Buffalo-bred brothers show just how much they’ve leveled up by recruiting legendary producer The Alchemist to handle all the beats. The surprise drop once again finds the duo paying homage to WWF wrestlers Razor Ramon and Diesel, who together called themselves The Outsiders and were celebrated for their unwavering loyalty.

Westside and Conway mirror this devotion, showcasing their almost telepathic abilities on cuts like the dusty, soul-sampling “Ray Mysterio” and the ScHoolboy Q-assisted “Fork in the Pot.” Throughout the project, the duo recount the highs and lows that come with making it out of the streets and onto the charts, like on the aptly titled “Judas,” where Conway the Machine raps, “They just wanna squeeze and leave you deceased, at least a paraplegic/Hit in my head and walked out of the hospital, please believe it.”

9 Tracks

April 29, 2021 at PDT

This Thing Of Ours

8 Tracks

June 29, 2023 at PDT

Flying High - EP

Whether you caught on during his days with Prodigy and Havoc or you caught up in just the past few years, The Alchemist’s arc towards a certain type of hip-hop stardom has as much to do with an awestruck respect for his craft as it does his rapper collaborators. With his ever inventive instrumentals, the producer draws in some of rap’s most elite and ascendent independent emcees, some of whom appear on this brief yet dope EP.

Flying High takes off with “RIP Tracy,” reuniting the well-matched lyrical duo of Earl Sweatshirt and Armand Hammer’s billy woods. Longtime associate Boldy James follows T.F’s aggressive bars on the subdued “Trouble Man” with far eerier ones, while MIKE and Sideshow cruise above the jazzy fray of “Bless.” Alchemist jumps on the mic too as frequent fliers Larry June and Jay Worthy take the pimp game to the skies on “Midnight Oil,” a musical mille-feuille fit for first-class passengers. Aspiring spitters and ALC devotees are gifted here with a reprise of the beats for all four tracks.

8 Tracks

February 14, 2023 at PST

60 Days - Single

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February 28, 2023 at PST

89 Earthquake - Single

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April 19, 2023 at PDT

No Idols

12 Tracks

August 29, 2019 at PDT

Yacht Rock 2

12 Tracks

August 15, 2024 at PDT

Together Forever - Single

1 Trackfalse

March 25, 2021 at PDT

Haram

14 Tracks

September 19, 2024 at PDT

The Genuine Articulate

With over 30 years in the game, The Alchemist feels both inevitable and essential. His list of collaborators, ranging from Mobb Deep to Earl Sweatshirt and Kendrick Lamar, speaks not only to his versatility, but also to the trust artists place in him to elevate their sound. After all, he’s “Everybody’s Favorite Uncle” for a reason. The Genuine Articulate isn’t just another showcase of Alc’s ability to curate today’s biggest names—it also highlights his lyrical prowess as he holds his own alongside his guests across the eight-track project.

The opener, “Ferraris in the Rain” featuring ScHoolboy Q, sets the tone with some of his signature jazzy production, perfectly framing a luxury-rap aesthetic only he can conjure. Elsewhere, Uncle Al raises the stakes with the defiant bassline of “Minnesota Fats,” where trusted collaborators Action Bronson and Big Body Bes bring their unmistakable energy. Longtime fans will especially appreciate “Scientology,” which reunites Alc with Havoc of Mobb Deep and subtly pays homage to their late friend and collaborator Prodigy.

While the draw of special guest features is undeniable, it’s The Alchemist’s evolution as a lyricist that’s sure to stand out most. The album’s closer, “Seasons Change,” finds him in a rare moment of vulnerability, reflecting on the simple joys of fatherhood—proving he’s just as formidable with his words as he is with his production.

8 Tracks

December 15, 2022 at PST

The Alchemist Sandwich

A legend supplies an eerie audio canvas for modern boom bap.

10 Tracks

March 13, 2023 at PDT

Slipping Into Darkness - Single

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October 24, 2023 at PDT

Nothing Is Freestyle - Single

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