Alchemist is always moving several steps ahead. Whenever I interview him, there are least two future projects locked and loaded and ready for war. When I interviewed him for the Step Brothers album, the Chemist was already talking about his gospel record. He didn’t elaborate much and I didn’t ask specifics because sometimes you want to be surprised. For whatever reason, I thought it might actually be a gospel compilation of archaic 45s excavated from some Clarksdale crate. Not quite.
The first leak from The Good Book (4/14), his project with Budgie, gravitates towards street gospel not country. Roc Marci and Prodigy form the new Mobb Deep that you always wanted but you never knew. Al has basically figured out how to re-invent the grimy snuff-the-oxygen-out rap of Queensbridge and give it a Beach Cities psychedelic tilt. Somewhere between Madlib and the Mobb, but it’s own thing. Alchemist songs sound like Alchemist songs. “Heaven’s Home” takes two of the most gutter from the slums of New York merges it with a weary sample worshiping Christ, flipped by a Beverly Hills Jew. And it’s harder than Hadoukens. Figures. Samples are always capable of being scrambled into a new order. Threats can always make your heart race. You’re just not supposed to play it by the book.
