Erykah Badu & The Alchemist – Before The World Blows

• Available December 11^th, 2026
• Ship orders that include this title will be held back

In the eleven years since her last project, Erykah Badu has gathered not conclusions but a series of existential insights. Before the World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment exists within the tension between introspection and growth. Abi is Badu. Alan is The Alchemist. Recorded over 18 months in Dallas and Los Angeles, the album is the inevitable collision of two iconoclasts—hypnotic, funny, blunt, deeply personal, and impossible to categorize neatly.

Meditative and fluid,Before the World Blows finds Badu contemplating which parts of ourselves and our stories are worth protecting before the world breaks and fragments. Love, innocence, dreams, memories, womanhood. With support from contemporaries like Thundercat, Kamasi Washington and Steve Lacy.

The album unfolds in four movements, charting the progression of self through the prisms of love, art, and identity, inviting us to sit with difficult feelings. Passion blurs with desire, hope with grief, each song revealing another illuminating facet of the inner Baduverse. Before the world blows, it’s worth it to keep exploring. To have one more kiss. Before the world blows, it’s worth it to get to know thyself.

This 2LP vinyl produced by Young Records in 2026. Gatefold sleeve.

TRACKLISTING:

1. Echos
2. I Just Play A Part
3. Crossfade (feat. DJ Creole Princess, Westside Gunn, Joi)
4. Witch Doctor
5. Valentine (feat. DRAM)
6. Next 2 U
7. Love Me Not
8. Breezy
9. Abracadabra
10. To The Moon (Plan C) (feat. Steve Lacy)
11. They Ain’t You (feat. Thundercat)
12. What The People Say (Apostle 1)
13. Hot BiBi (Apostle 2)
14. No I.D. (feat. Westside Gunn)
15. I Know That Man (feat. Earl Sweatshirt)
16. Black Box (feat. Kamasi Washington)