Music Makes Me Feel: Alchemist and Lexa Gates

mysterious piano samples

i really couldn’t find two people more different

Music Makes Me Feel 📣

Welcome to Music Makes Me Feel where I introduce you to different artists, sounds, albums, playlists that made me feel some type of way.

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The Alchemist and Lexa Gates

What does a 45 year old producer (left) from Beverly Hills and a 22 year old singer/rapper from Queens have in common?

Not a whole lot, obviously.

A couple months ago I discovered Lexa through a music discovery account on TikTok (shoutout andfriends.nyc), and I was like oh woah interesting sound. I head over to Spotify and give some tracks a listen. It’s gotta a unique NYC flow to it, idk how to explain it. It’s gritty but feminine. Tough but soft. The subject matter is serious but also deeply unserious. I checked out Selfish, it’s my favorite track of hers. What caught my ears were this crescendo of hers that builds up around 1:10 that made me go “hold on.”

The Alchemist, by contrast, is well-known. I really got to know his work from Larry June’s The Great Escape. The Alchemist recently came out with this track:

Now where does the similarity begin? It’s a really, really minuscule intersection but it’s been haunting me. Listen to the first 15 seconds of Selfish, and then listen to Bless starting around 0:13 . Let me know if you hear it, but, better yet, let me know if you know what sample it is lol.

Best,

Haroon

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