The Erykah Badu and Alchemist album finally has a confirmed release date: 28 August 2026, issued digitally through Control FREAQ Records and Young Recordings, with lead single ‘Witch Doctor’ arriving alongside the announcement.
A Title Still Missing, a Date Very Much Present
What the announcement does not include is a title. Despite Alan Maman, aka the Alchemist, previously divulging the name Abi & Alan, the official release announcement sidesteps any project name entirely. A Bandcamp listing currently reads: ‘Sorry, we don’t have an album title yet…’ Whether that placeholder is playful or a sign of last-minute indecision, nobody involved is saying.
What is confirmed is the music. ‘Witch Doctor’ is the lead single, and it arrives with a video that functions as a sequel to Badu’s 2010 clip for ‘Window Seat,’ in which she removed her clothes and staged being shot at the site of President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 assassination in Dallas. The new 10-minute ‘Witch Doctor’ short picks up the thread 16 years on, following Badu through nighttime streets and a series of progressively violent encounters. Rather than removing her clothes herself, she is robbed of them. It is a pointed inversion.
According to The FADER, this record will be Badu’s first studio album in 16 years, which puts the scope of the release in some perspective. This is not a routine project drop.
Phone-Free Shows and the Road to the Erykah Badu Alchemist Album
The route to 28 August has been a long one. Badu and the Alchemist co-produced the record over 18 months, working between Dallas and Los Angeles. But before any formal announcement, the music was already being shaped in front of audiences. The Ritz Herald reports that from 2024 into 2025 the pair road-tested the material in intimate, phone-free shows, with Badu’s collective The Cannabinoids performing alongside the Alchemist on the MPC.
Those shows gave the project its early life before it reached streaming platforms, and they point to the kind of trust-the-room ethos running through how the record was built. Phone-free sets are increasingly common as a curatorial statement, a way of keeping something close before it goes everywhere at once.
The release also carries a small catalogue of pre-existing tracks. The single ‘Next to You’ had already been in circulation and is expected to appear on the LP. Beyond that, ‘Echos 19 (mix 122)’ surfaced as an Amazon Music exclusive, debuted during Badu’s Juneteenth concert celebration in Dallas. Three tracks, three different points of entry, before the full thing lands.
The Erykah Badu and Alchemist album is being handled by Control Freaq / Young, with the duo also set to tour North America together next month. The shape of that run has not been detailed yet, but the live appetite for this pairing is already established from the earlier intimate shows that helped the material breathe before it reached wider ears.
There is something in the texture of how this has been released that feels deliberate rather than chaotic. A title withheld, a Bandcamp placeholder left wry and open, a video that rewires a 16-year-old provocation. The record arrives on 28 August through Control FREAQ Records and Young Recordings, and however they eventually decide to name it, that date is now fixed.
