Erykah Badu and The Alchemist are really making an album together, and their first single is finally here.
Badu and the West Coast producer dropped their new song “Next to You” at midnight after she performed Badu Presents: Echos 19 in her hometown of Dallas as part of Forever in Rotation, Amazon Music’s Juneteenth celebration.
According to a press release, the Dallas singer self-executive produced, wrote, composed, arranged and produced the single in collaboration with The Alchemist, who provided the beat from his classic 1999 record “The Realest” featuring the late Prodigy and Kool G Rap from Mobb Deep‘s fourth album, Murda Muzik, for her to flip. And she did just that as she sang about wanting to smoke blunts and hang out after school with a significant other with the beat switching midway as Badu put her own “‘izm on it.”
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Erykah recently announced that she will be releasing music independently through her own label, Control FREAQ Records, which was established since 2005, and whose first signee was Jay Electronica, the father of her third child. She has been with Motown since 2007 and hasn’t released a project since the 2015 mixtape But You Can’t Use My Phone.
Starting on Tuesday (June 24) at Billboard Live Osaka, the two legends will be hitting the stage together in a trio of shows in Japan courtesy of Billboard Live for The Abi & Alan Japan Tour. Saturday (June 28) at Billboard Live Tokyo and Monday (June 30) at KT Zepp Yokohama are the other two dates.
