McKinley Dixon - Magic, Alive! (2025) [Hi-Res]

Before the release of Magic, Alive!, Virginia-rooted rapper McKinley Dixon's finest recent work—2021's For My Mama and Anyone Who Look Like Her and 2023's Beloved! Paradise! Jazz!?—drew from a factually confessional, observationally literate, and emotionally raw sense of public grieving. But his ability to translate his experiences with pain and loss into relatable songs still hits when he adds another layer or two of distance and fiction, and Magic, Alive! is no less powerful for it. A concept record about a tight-knit friend group of kids dealing with the death of one of their own, this album is evocative even when drawing from a hazy past life—one infused with magical realism and the emotional intensity of youth. The titular magic sits somewhere between the arcane and the everyday, where resurrecting the dead and chasing immortality seems mysterious yet as possible as natural science. Dixon's post-Weezy flow is animated by an elastic drawl with cartoon voice-actor versatility that makes both his assonant lyrical runs and his storytelling details pop like firecrackers. (A particular highlight of both, from "We're Outside, Rejoice!": "Through an obvious choice/ Child born under sun /Lift 'em up/ We gon' hoist/ When you yell at the sky /Hide the crack in ya voice".) The sense of ancestral power is rich in this record—second-half highlights like ICECOLDBISHOP/Pink Siifu collab "All The Loved Ones (What Would We Do???)" and Teller Bank$ feature "F.F.O.L." acknowledge it vividly—as is the sense of communal gratitude; guest rappers like Quelle Chris, Ghais Guevara, and Blu feel welcomed here because they're just as connected to Dixon's similar gift with existential autobiography. And it's got the perfect backdrop: London producer Sam Yamaha builds the backbone of a lush neo-Soulquarian live-band atmosphere, the kind of gleaming, generationally-inherited soul-jazz that makes it feel like maybe there really is such a place you could experience an endless summer.