‘The Business of Detail’: How Kendrick, Erykah Badu & Mobb Deep Producer The Alchemist Has Stayed Hot for 25 Years

In May 2024, the head-to-head dis track shoot-out between Drake and Kendrick Lamar escalated sharply. Drake released “Family Matters,” lobbing accusations of infidelity and abuse — but Compton’s finest was ready. Twenty minutes later, Lamar dropped the blistering “Meet the Grahams,” a 6-and-a-half-minute surgical dismantling of his foe.

The release caught one particular listener by surprise: The Alchemist, who had produced its eerily methodical beat. “I was getting a haircut,” he says on Zoom from his Santa Monica, Calif., studio, framed by shelves teeming with records. Though the descending piano sample pairs perfectly with Lamar’s dead-eyed calm on the track, the 47-year-old veteran producer says he sent the beat to the rapper well before the battle began — and had no idea Lamar was preparing to drop it.

“I heard it when you heard it,” he says. “It was crazy. I felt how probably everybody else felt: Whoa!”

That brief exclamation is about the most animated The Alchemist — known as both Al and Alc to his friends — seems to get in conversation. Today, sporting a salt-and-pepper beard, a white crew neck T-shirt and a red-and-white Pirate Barcelona snapback, with a joint in hand, there’s a tranquility about him, perhaps because 30 years into his career, he has seen it all — and has the freedom to do what he wants, whether that’s working with up-and-comers like San Francisco rapper Larry June, collaborating with the legendary Erykah Badu on her first full-length album in 15 years or hitting the studio with longtime friend Havoc for a new Mobb Deep project, the first since Prodigy’s death in 2017.

“I remember a time when I couldn’t turn down a couple hundred-thousand-dollar offers for anything,” he says. “And God bless that now I’m able to flow, do things my way and not have to need anybody’s money for anything. That’s like the best s–t ever, you know?”

Born Alan Maman, the Los Angeles native started out rapping as a teenager in a group called the Whooliganz. Around the same time, a friend dubbed him The Alchemist, a play on both his given name and his budding interest in the science of making beats. “I would’ve killed myself to get a beat from [DJ] Premier or Pete Rock when I was 15,” he says. Instead, he relied on himself and his drum machine for his group’s early demos. “Production was just something I was interested in. It was just another muscle that formed, and then gradually, I just let the rap muscle fizzle and went more into the production side of things.”

The Whooliganz caught the attention of Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs, who took the young group under his wing and brought it on tour with his own Soul Assassins. Alc moved to New York in 1995 to attend New York University as a general studies major, but his real education was happening outside of the classroom, thanks again to Muggs, who connected him with hardcore hip-hop leaders Mobb Deep.

By then, the Queens duo of Prodigy and Havoc already had three albums to its name, but it was its fourth, 1999’s Murda Muzik, that would become Mobb Deep’s most commercially successful, going platinum the year of its release and debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. The Alchemist landed two of his productions on it: “Thug Muzik” and “The Realest.” Although they were never singles and didn’t burn up the Billboard Hot 100, they gave the budding producer the street cred that started him on his path to becoming a household name.

“You could put it on a timeline, before and after me connecting with Mobb Deep,” he says. “So it was a big, big step for me. I was a huge fan of them, and you have to remember: Havoc is one of the best producers of all time. They, by far, did not need anybody to come in and bring beats. So I was allowed into that circle, and I always thank both of them.”

The Alchemist became known for his sample-heavy work, often mining disco, soul and R&B records from the 1970s and 1980s for snippets that became the foundations of his sturdy but atmospheric productions. Revered New York rappers including Nas, Ghostface Killah, Jadakiss and Fat Joe gravitated to his moody style and enlisted him for production, cementing his place in East Coast rap history, despite his California origins. “I was inspired probably more by the East Coast,” he says. “I grew up in L.A., so that’s always going to be the birthplace and the home. I feel more these days like a West Coast representative, but some people to this day might say, ‘What? I thought he was from Queens, New York.’ ”

Alc moved back to L.A. around 2010 to be closer to family and opened a studio in Santa Monica where he started “connecting with a totally new generation of guys that I locked in with.” Over the next few years, that included members of the rising young West Coast collectives Top Dawg Entertainment (then known better as TDE) and Odd Future; his work with their members, including ScHoolboy Q from the former and Earl Sweatshirt from the latter, built his reputation among a whole new generation of rappers. (On a 2019 song, ScHoolboy rapped, “Alchemist my favorite producer, and he my friend”; in a 2016 verse, Earl referred to him as “my uncle Alchemist.”)

While some of The Alchemist’s 1990s and early-2000s production peers have reduced their output, he has maintained his volume, consistently working on projects year after year. “First and foremost, you have to have some good beats,” he says when describing the not-so-secret to his success. “You really have to make [the artists] want to write. And luckily, I honed my craft long enough and developed a sound that some of the guys that are my favorite, they mess with.”

Some of these favorites include June, with whom he has released two collaborative albums, including this year’s acclaimed Life Is Beautiful with 2 Chainz, and Freddie Gibbs. The Alchemist and Gibbs released their first full-length collaboration, Alfredo, in 2020, and it earned them a Grammy Award nomination for best rap album. Alc appreciated the acknowledgment, his first nomination, but the practical implications meant more. “You get more money for stuff after [being nominated]. Records sell more. It gets your reputation out there,” he says. But at the end of the day, “If RZA told me my music was dope, it would be even better than a Grammy.”

The Alchemist and Gibbs began working on Alfredo’s follow-up two years ago, “but we were doing it quietly the whole time,” Alc says. “The last one was quick. This one, we took a little bit more time to stir the pot and just make it what we wanted, but we also wanted to keep it under wraps until the time was right.” Alfredo 2 arrived in July with little warning, “because with the short attention span of everybody, you don’t need a long stretch,” he says. “[We] just felt like we didn’t need to build up expectations. It’s like, they know what we did the first time. Let’s go. If we’re going to go part two, let’s just hit them with it, you know?”

Alc has released instrumental albums, solo Alchemist rap albums and one-off productions for other artists throughout his career, but fully collaborative albums, like those he did with Gibbs, have become his go-to. He credits Prodigy with opening the door to that concept with the rapper’s 2007 solo album, Return of the Mac, which The Alchemist produced entirely: “That was P giving me an opportunity. We reached a level in our relationship of work and friendship where he trusted me at that point. Even though it started as a mixtape, it became an album.”

Since then, many other artists have entrusted their album production to The Alchemist, sometimes going so far as to give him dual billing, like Gibbs, Action Bronson, Curren$y, Havoc, Boldy James, Armand Hammer, Roc Marciano, June, Earl — and soon, Badu, an artist Alc describes as “on my bucket list, eternally.”

The pair began collaborating almost two years ago after Badu was inspired by the beat from Mobb Deep’s “The Realest,” one of the songs that originally opened doors for The Alchemist and continues to do so, more than 25 years later. According to Alc, Badu and their mutual friend Cold Cris were together when “ ‘The Realest’ beat came on one day in the car, and she was like, ‘I got an idea.’ ” Badu came to L.A., while Alc traveled to Dallas, immersing themselves in each other’s worlds. “Her level of talent is unseen,” he says. “She knows no bounds, you know; can’t sit still. She might walk in and just go right to the keyboard and just play for an hour the most amazing s–t you’ve ever heard. It was cool because she makes beats, too.”

The first taste of the album Badu and The Alchemist produced together arrived in June with the single “Next to You,” which flips the “Realest” beat. “It’s crazy how things come full circle,” he says. The full album is nearly complete, though Alc expects Badu to tinker with it “until the 23rd hour and 59th second. And I support it fully. Out of this process is me trusting her process.”

He can relate. “We all work in the business of detail. There are things that I might be adding or subtracting that nobody will pay attention to, but it’ll bug the s–t out of me if I don’t fix it. And this is just the sickness that we have as producers, and I’m sure producers can relate. It might just be the slightest thing, but that’s our job.”

While the Badu album, titled Abi & Alan, is scheduled to arrive Aug. 29, Alc has a host of other projects in the pipeline. The new Mobb Deep album has “been turned in,” he says. “It’s just the production, me and Havoc together. We took it to the old formula of him doing the majority and me adding on, and man, just hearing [Prodigy’s] voice, I think people are just going to see how missed he is in this.”

He is also gearing up to release an album as Forensics, his collaborative duo with Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def, before the end of the year. “That album is done also, and it’s very special, very special. I think they’ve never heard Yasiin in this exact bag. It’s real personal for him, and we’ve already done shows, festivals, and you could see the effect on the crowd.”

And if that were not enough, The Alchemist may be involved, once again, with the music for the next Grand Theft Auto installment, coming from Rockstar Games in 2026. “I cannot confirm nor deny,” he says after a pause, dramatically arcing his arm through the air and ashing his joint. “Rockstar, they’re the greatest. Those are my brothers. You’ll have to see. I guess we’ll just have to see,” he adds, smirking.

Alc has spent years working to achieve this level of flexibility. The only label he’s signed to is his own, ALC Records (“I’m signed to me,” he says. “I don’t think I would ever sign to anyone”), with a digital distribution deal with EMPIRE. The father of two arrives most days at his Santa Monica studio around 7 a.m. to get to work and says he is “excited every day to have the job I have at this point in my career. And tomorrow, I could run over here, make a beat and do something, and it could change the trajectory or add on to the story.”

He still dreams of working with certain older, prestige rappers (“I’m a superfan, so if you could probably think of it and I haven’t worked with them, I’m probably thinking the same thing”), but he has spent the last five years collaborating with those he considers today’s genre leaders. “And that goes from a Billy Woods or a Boldy James up to a Kendrick Lamar or an Erykah Badu and anything Freddie Gibbs, Action [Bronson], Roc Marci [Marciano]. I could name Earl,” he says. “And I don’t take it light. I feel like it’s a responsibility.”

To meet that responsibility, Alc recognizes that sometimes, his job is to move aside. “You kind of have to figure out what works and how to then get the best out of [the artist],” he says. “It’s like this instinct that’s hard to pin down, but you have to follow their lead. Some artists I know, they encourage more feedback. Other artists, let them paint their painting and get out of the way.”

He also emphasizes the importance of cultivating real relationships with his collaborators beyond the studio. “In this business, you might meet people through the music and then just end up doing music, some even good music, some average, and then some people you develop friendships and relationships with beyond just making music. Earl and Larry are both people I consider close friends of mine. We don’t just do music together.” Most of his collaborations these days come not from blind A&R outreach but from friends linking him with rappers he then befriends before they even hit “record.”

“There’s something to be said about that,” he continues. “You probably make better music with your friends. You could still make great music with a stranger. But I think your chances, if you’re making something with people you’re friends with, you could really make something.”

This story appears in the Aug. 16, 2025, issue of Billboard.