This week's PBS Feature Album is a collaboration between Erykah Badu and The Alchemist, Before The World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment. The co-produced album was recorded over 18 months in Dallas and Los Angeles and is one of the most forward-thinking bodies of work of either artist's career: a record that will live, love and evolve with the listener through space and time.
Before The World Blows: The Abi and Alan Experiment exists in the tension between introspection and growth. Abi is Badu. Alan is The Alchemist. The record finds Badu contemplating which parts of ourselves and our stories - love, innocence, dreams, memories, womanhood - are worth protecting before the world breaks and fragments. Meditative and fluid, 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.
Tune in all this week to hear tracks from Before The World Blows. PBS Members have the chance to win a copy of the album on CD - simply email your name and membership number to before midnight Sunday September 13.
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TOP TRACKS WE'RE LOVING THIS WEEK
Busta Rhymes & J Dilla - 'This Woman' Feat. D'Angelo
Evening News - 'Kaboom'
The Seven Ups - 'New Palace'
Saul Williams - 'The Dagger'
Nyota Parker - 'Say Less'
Babaka - 'A Bug In The Dark'
Andy Stott (feat Elaine Howley) - 'Something In Mind'
Polygonia, Simon Popp - 'Honeydrop'
Logic1000 - 'The Only On'e (ft. Christine and the Queens)
Frenzee - 'Jack Of All Trades'
