About Erykah Badu: She grew up listening to ’70s soul and ’80s hip-hop, but Erykah Badu drew more comparisons to Billie Holiday upon her breakout in 1997, after the release of her first album, Baduizm. The grooves and production on the album are bass-heavy R&B, but Badu’s languorous, occasionally tortured vocals and delicate phrasing immediately removed her from the legion of cookie-cutter female R&B singers. A singer/songwriter responsible for all but one of the songs on Baduizm, she found a number 12 hit with her first single, “On & On,” which pushed the album to number two on the charts. Read more here.
About The Alchemist: One of the most revered and prolific rap producers of his generation, the Alchemist crafts sample-heavy, tough, yet detailed beats suffused with soul. His extensive discography, dating back to the early 1990s, includes tracks by the likes of Dilated Peoples, Mobb Deep, Nas, Ghostface Killah, Lil Wayne, and Kendrick Lamar, and he’s so valued as a collaborator that he has been behind joint albums co-billed with the likes of Prodigy (Return of the Mac, 2007), Oh No (including Gutter Water, the duo’s first album as Gangrene, 2010), Curren$y (Covert Coup, 2011 and again in 2022 with critical favorite Continuance), Freddie Gibbs (Alfredo, 2020), and Roc Marciano (The Elephant Man’s Bones, 2022). One of his highest-charting albums, the Larry June collaboration The Great Escape, appeared in 2023, as well as albums with MIKE and Earl Sweatshirt. Blacks & Whites with Big Hit and Hit-Boy was issued in 2024. The next year he teamed up with Larry June yet again, this time bringing 2 Chainz into the collaboration with the Billboard-charting album Life Is Beautiful. In addition to his supporting work as a beatmaker, he has delivered numerous concurrent projects as a headliner and occasional rapper, such as the albums 1st Infantry, Chemical Warfare, and Russian Roulette, and a ceiling-scraping stack of EPs, mixtapes, and instrumental sets. He’s also Eminem’s long-tenured official DJ. Read more here.
