by Justin Davis (@AnkhDeLillo)
When you stay as busy as The Alchemist, it could feel like there’s little left to say or prove. But as listeners’ attention spans are getting shorter and subgenres are constantly fracturing, complacency can also feel like a trap — “You’re only as good as your last book,” says a quick vocal snippet on his newest EP, Flying High. The Alchemist’s continued relevance in hip-hop’s mainstream and underground doesn’t just come from his massive output, though: it’s also his keen sense of collaboration, his signature talent of shaping a sonic world around a rapper’s vision. Rappers who’ve worked with The Alchemist frequently mention how much he challenges them, too, offering new paths that they didn’t even know they needed.
You could divide The Alchemist’s career into overlapping eras based on his most intimate rotation of collaborators. Some of his current favorites have been go-to guests for the past five to ten years, like Freddie Gibbs, Action Bronson, Roc Marciano, Curren$y, and the Griselda Records roster. More recently, he’s dived headfirst into a network of left-field experimentalists whom he met through his good friend Earl Sweatshirt—like MIKE, Armand Hammer, Pink Siifu, Navy Blue, Mavi, and Sideshow. Flying High is a new “grab-bag” compilation to show off a sliver of his recent studio time, a spiritual sequel to 2021’s similarly-structured This Thing Of Ours EPs.
Each edition of This Thing Of Ours focused on using a generally younger generation of MCs to paint a distinct slice of life. Unlike those projects, Flying High jumps between moods, like the dusky lounge piano and guitar on “Bless,” or the crowded vocal samples on “Midnight Oil.” The muted horns on “Trouble Man” quietly ascend in front of light percussion and twinkling keys that offer less pacing than a sense of foreboding. These tracks clearly come from different moments—a snippet of “RIP Tracy” appears in a hard to find documentary from Armand Hammer’s Haram sessions, while “Midnight Oil” could easily come from the international studio treks that birthed Larry June’s new album The Great Escape. What ties all the beats together is their minimalism: built on sparse loops and chops with subtle undertones, the sound palette of Flying High feels designed to let its featured rappers comfortably flex their muscles.
One of the most fascinating parts of an Alchemist compilation is seeing how each guest fits into his world-building with limited time to leave a mark. South L.A. rapper T.F., for example—most well known for his work with ScHoolboy Q and Roc Marciano—delivers a scattershot verse full of sharp quips on “Trouble Man.” MIKE maintains a dense, syllable-heavy rhyme scheme on “Bless,” while Sideshow veers more laidback and conversational. The three verses on “Midnight Oil” tackle its soulful, off-kilter rhythm with distinct approaches. Larry June slows his already-relaxed style to a muddy drawl; Jay Worthy picks up the pace with a swaying, unbalanced flow, while Alchemist steps in himself with a stream-of-consciousness run of snapshots and blunt brags.
There are some lyrical through lines across these tracks—the seedy underbelly of the 1970s metropolis and infamous mobsters like John Gotti are frequent touchstones for The Alchemist—but the EP as a whole comes together through its feeling more than its content. billy woods perfectly captures the project’s introspection, anxiety, and brashness on opener “RIP Tracy,” meditating on uncomfortable truths, revolutionary violence, and the ubiquity of American gun culture: “The blood of tyrants going cheap as hell by the pint / them things are cheaper still / 3D printer will get you everything but the laser sight.” woods’ verses are the EP’s most explicitly political moment, but they don’t feel out of place among its retrospective meditations, moody gangsterisms, and low-stakes lyrical exercises.
Worth special mention is Boldy James, who delivers one of his best verses of the year on “Trouble Man.” The imagery of drug-running and hood warfare appear in a myriad of roles, like an inescapable tattoo on the brain (“just caught a body in my sleep, I need a dream chaser”); a calling card for the Black outlaw musician (“slapping all this bass, I show you why they call me B.B. King”); a sacrilegious rite of protection (“Lucifer’s advocate, the Devil got my soul tainted”); and the grimy residue of Western imperialism (“come to my hood, it look like Lebanon”). Calm, precise, and utterly bone-chilling, it feels like Boldy’s take on modernist poet Wallace Steven’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”
Flying High feels less like a victory lap than a brief bit of downtime before another peak, a reminder that The Alchemist is still full of surprises after thirty years of beat making. It’s a testament to the synergy of “Uncle Al”’s artistic community that these loose tracks are so compelling. If this project—and this phase of his career—has a mission statement, it’s Earl Sweatshirt’s final words on “RIP Tracy”: “Don’t snooze, I got a couple more moves to show you.”