Erykah Badu’s long-awaited new album is a collaboration with The Alchemist

A few months ago, Erykah Badu said in an interview with The Breakfast Club that she had a new album on the way, “a collab album” to be specific, and now said in a new interview with Billboard that the collaborator is none other than The Alchemist. Alchemist has been at the forefront of the current boom bap revival, with recent collaborative albums with Freddie Gibbs, Boldy James, Armand Hammer, Roc Marciano, Earl Sweatshirt, Conway the Machine, Action Bronson, MIKE & Wiki, and others, and next week (3/28) he’s set to release a collaborative album with Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def) called Forensics, but I’m pretty sure this is first time making a full album with a neo-soul legend. It’ll be very interesting to hear what they cook up.

Here’s some more from the interview:

She says she only collaborates with people whose music she really enjoys. Dram featured her on his debut album in 2016. She jumped on a track for Teyana Taylor’s self-titled album in 2020. She lent her vocals to a Jamie xx song that came out in January. And at the 2025 Grammy Awards, she won the best melodic rap performance statue for a collaboration with Rapsody, “3:AM.” “It snuck up on me!” she says. “I remember collaborating with [producer] S1 and Rapsody and we had such a good time promoting the song and I just felt like it was all for her basically. She worked very hard to get to this place.”

[…] The album has been taking up most of her time; she says she can’t wait until she’s done. And whatever time that isn’t occupied by her family and nonmusical interests — such as her cannabis strain collaboration with brand Cookies called That Badu — goes toward keeping herself in the best mental, emotional and physical shape possible and making sure she’s set for the future. “When I was building my house, I was making sure that I was building ramps for when I was elderly and couldn’t walk by myself,” the now-54-year-old says. “When I do my workouts, I do workouts that are conducive for picking up groceries and grandchildren and things like that.”

Read more at Billboard and stay tuned to learn more about this album.