Hemispheres away from each other, Roc Marciano and The Alchemist are in sync like they’re in the same room. Roc is back home in LA, decompressing from Art Basel, while The Alchemist, who DJs for Eminem, is just landing in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with the “Rap God.” It’s slightly past midnight for Alchemist, who shows us Zoom attendees a group of people taking pictures of him in front of his hotel. It’s unclear if they’re sneaking shots because, as he suspects, his purple-and-pink ensemble is in stark contrast to their cultural garb or because he’s one of the greatest producers ever to walk the earth.
During our conversation, someone walks up to show him love. The international appreciation is a testament to the body of work and production acumen displayed on The Skeleton Key, his new album with Roc Marciano, a follow-up to their 202 collaboration, Elephant Man’s Bones. When I ask when they started working on the 10-track album, which dropped Monday on RocMarci.com (with two bonus songs) and is available on streaming platforms today, Roc clarifies that they have an ongoing creative relationship. Alchemist is always sending beats, and Roc is always writing. Their chemistry is apparent throughout our conversation as they finish and build on each others’ thoughts.
That cohesion comes through on the album’s first single, “Chopstick,” which exemplifies The Skeleton Key’s overall vibe. Throughout the project, Alchemist delivers a canvas that varies from the sixties horror score of “Rauf” to the searing “Street Magic,” where Roc rhymes, “I’m a wolf, I’m aloof, I’m not cool / Despite what you may have assumed, I’m rude,” characteristically delivered with enough steeliness to radiate an entirely different context of “cool.”
Their sophomore collaboration comes at the end of banner years for both artists. Alchemist dropped three projects: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose (as Gangrene with Oh No), Black & Whites with Hit-Boy and Big Hit, and The Genuine Articulate — while garnering notable individual placements like Kendrick Lamar’s “Meet The Grahams.” In March, Roc Marciano released his well-regarded album Marciology. He also recently struck a partnership between his Pimpire International label and Roc Nation’s Equity Distribution, which he says puts “a staff” behind his movement in a manner he’s never had before. The two say 2025 is set to be just as prosperous as they’re more artistically focused and empowered on the business end than ever.
Roc Marciano and The Alchemist talked to Rolling Stone about The Skeleton Key, their craft as producers, and the late, great Ka.
How’s your 2024 been?
Alchemist: It’s been eventful. It’s been more than I could ask for. I can’t speak for Roc, but I feel like we’re both at the place where we’re in a real good hefty stride where it’s like… I won’t say comfort zone because we never try to get too comfortable. I think the turnout and after running for a long time, it feels like we don’t got to speed on the bike anymore; we could kick back and we’re in a flow now. For years, I felt like we were pedaling to create the landscape that we have now. I feel like that’s why it’s… I don’t want to say easy, but it’s like without much effort that we could pull off something like this, basically whenever we want.
At what point would you say you felt that flow state?
Alchemist: I don’t know if it was a moment, but once we pulled off Elephant Man’s Bones, it felt like we approached it. We got over a hump, and it was like once we both got that and achieved that, collectively, I feel like — and maybe it’s in my head — I could pitch 80 to 90% with Roc if I’m sending him beats or if I got something in mind for him. We’re pretty much in sync. Similar to the flow I had with Prodigy, two completely different artists, but it was like the [similar] rhythm that we were in. It’s rare when you get connections like that with other artists.
When would you say y’all started working on this project?
Roc Marciano: It’s kind of like we never stopped. We always making music. I’m always sitting on a batch of beats from Al.
How much of this one did y’all get a chance to record in person?
Roc: Damn, how many joints we did? I think some of the older joints we did from the last project we might’ve did together, I’m not sure.
Alchemist: I’m not sure. Some of them we did, but we live in the same city now, too. I feel like we’re damn near in the same studio every morning because of our respective work areas. I could pull up on Roc, or he’d come to my spot, but I think the flow is better when I’m sending him stuff and he’s in his bag over there, taking his time. And then we convene, and we come to my spot or his spot, we take notes, but I think we both have our [own] work environment. I know if Roc is in his element over there, I could just send him stuff, and at his leisure, if it might be three in the morning, it might be eight in the morning, whatever, he’s comfy, and he’s able to do what he does.
How intentional was it for this one to have no features?
Roc: I don’t know, I don’t care about features, to be honest. [Laughs] Features are always an afterthought. Whenever I put features on my album, they’re usually my friends. I never think of an album and be like, “Yo, I need rappers on my album.” I don’t give a fuck about features.
Alchemist: It felt like we needed to just do this one. I felt like people that love what we do, I don’t think that they’re like, “Man, that album was good, but we needed some other voices on there.” I feel like if anything, they might be annoyed. It wasn’t one of those events. It felt like a quick mission we needed to pull off, just us in our bag. It naturally became that. And I think it says something too. I was telling Roc yesterday that it’s kind of dope that we were able to get together and make something with this much motion. And get with Josué Thomas, who’s our brother, to do the artwork, and [have] Evidence, also our brother, to do the video. It’s a very self-contained creative product.
What is it that’s special and distinct about collaborating with each other?
Roc: Alchemist is one of the greats. I always wanted to work with him from back in the days since the Mobb Deep days. So to be able to work with him now, and call him one of my closest friends, I’m blessed to even have this friend circle. So it’s respect and admiration from my side.
Alchemist: And I say it all the time, Roc’s my favorite rapper, and I don’t take it lightly because somebody I consider my favorite is one of my close friends. Those are two separate things. I don’t ever let one conflate the other. You are still the God, so when I get an opportunity to work with him or get his ear… Because I know what the hell he’s going to do to these beats, and it’s like, that’s your best friend, if you make beats. Your best friend is the guy who’s going to take your beats and breathe life into them. My friends make me look good. Without these guys, they’d just be a bunch of cool instrumentals. So I value it, and I let them know every time we get a chance to work, like, “Man, thank you.”
Roc: Thank you, brother, and I’m lucky myself, man, to make shit, and you always have my back, and make sure I always got a crazy pack from you.
Alchemist: That ain’t easy, because Roc’s standards is high. [Laughs] I send him a lot of stuff until we land on the right one, but it’s specific. We always find if it takes a couple beats, CDs, or whatever it takes, we going to get to a place where he finds something that moves the pen, and that’s all I can ask for.
So, Roc, as a rapper and producer, what does it do for you as an emcee when you can get beats from somebody and just focus on writing?
Roc: Yeah, it’s definitely [like] now I don’t have to worry about half the workload. So all I have to do is make sure that I hold up my end of the bargain. When I’m doing my own production, obviously, you got to wear both hats. With this, I get a chance totally focus on what I’m writing, so it’s definitely a much better and easier process for me.
On “Street Magic,” you said: “I don’t need my ego stroked.” How important is it not to be driven in your art by external validation?
Alchemist: I mean, shit, Roc don’t give a fuck about that. Roc is truly the essence of that. He don’t care with nothing. He does it for the most purest, and not even selfish [reasons], like it’s got to be validated to him first. It got to sit right in his heart, and where he’s at in his career. If somebody else likes it, that shit is trivial for Roc, because I look at stuff. I like to do consumer research and see what’s out there. Roc really, he appreciates it, but he ain’t tripping on that. It’s truthfully [like] we validate this first. We do it for a deeper, higher purpose. So anyone else liking it or validating it after is icing on the cake, you know what I mean?
Roc: And I don’t trust people’s tastes anyway. People have bad tastes, so a person with bad taste can’t tell me shit. It’s no need for me to even try to wrap my head around that. I trust my taste over 99% of motherfuckers out here, so have at it. If people love it, they love it. If they don’t, it’s cool.
What does your consumer research look like, Al?
Alchemist: I do my studies, man. I love watching it. It fascinates me to see that we could press upload on this album, and in Germany, or in Belgium, or Japan, within an hour, there’s people enjoying it. I watch the reviews. If you do reviews, and you got five views on your review, I’m one of the five views. I try to give hope to some of them guys in their room doing those reviews. I watch them, and I like seeing, even if it’s a bad review, the real-time effect of our music on some technology shit.
Roc: I got your bad review hanging right here.
Alchemist: [Laughs] I never thought in my life that I would be in retail. At this point in our careers, we actually run our own labels. We make all the decisions. So it’s on some consumer research type of thing, just seeing what’s working, what isn’t. I check the temperatures out there.
That reminds me of the tweet you made recently. It was like, “Yo, if you’re hot, I’ll find you.“
Alchemist: When something that reaches my radar is genuine, I definitely am the type that’ll reach out. I love discovering new artists, or giving somebody who’s a new producer [props like] “Yo, I see you. Keep going crazy.” There’s a producer, Child Actor, who’s really dope that was on my radar. I reached out to him. I didn’t wait for him to hit me like, “Yo, you’re dope. I mess with you.” I’ve done that to a lot of guys because I know what that does, and what that would’ve done for me at the time. And it’s genuine, too, like these are people I get inspiration from.
Roc: Yeah, I love doing that, too. I love when you shout people out, and show them love, and they be like, “Yo, wow.” They can’t believe it. You be like, “What, you think I’m corny?” I’m not corny, bro. If you dope, I’ll show you love. It ain’t no skin off my back. So to show love, it don’t cost you nothing.
Roc, how does the recent partnership with Roc Nation add to your movement?
Roc: It’s just now, there’s a staff behind it. It’s contributing in ways that I feel like the people that were supporting me, they’ve always wanted to see it on a bigger stage and they wanted to see it pushed more to the front. So now that I have a staff and a team behind the projects, because everything that was built, even on our side, we built this without a staff. We weren’t even using marketing dollars and advertisements. This has all been organic. So now, to actually have some people helping out, it’s going to be great, and it’s going to bring more awareness, and it’s bringing more awareness to what we’re doing.
Al, I saw you were in one of Eminem’s trailers for his recent album. I was wondering what that experience was like, filming that trailer.
Alchemist: It was cool. It was an honor. Anytime they give me the chance to wet my shoes with some acting. And yeah, it’s cool to add that to the list of things that I do. Just being affiliated with Eminem. Obviously, I’m overseas right now on tour with Eminem. Yeah. It’s a blessing to be hitting on all levels. And I could be on the road with him doing this big ass show, come home, hit the studio, and get busy with Roc Marci and make classics and hit the road. I’m blessed to have all these different influences and be able to be with the best of the best in every category.
So yeah, it was dope. It was dope when they tapped me to do shit like that because acting, it’s a new challenge for me. Wow. This is a whole world. And even though there’s little bits and things, last year I was filming some stuff with Hit-Boy and Big Hit and it’s fun. It’s like, “Shit. This is tough.” This is not… I respect actors. So it was fun to be able to do that.
You mentioned you did something with Big Hit and Hit-Boy. I was wondering if the Eminem thing was your first acting role since Murda Muzik.
Alchemist: [Laughs] That was my debut. Trevor, the gun salesman. Probably. And that was a last-minute thing, too. But acting is something that I would love to try my hand at a little more. I have a couple of things coming I don’t want to blow up, but for next year I think it should be interesting.
In another interview, you said, “The fun is in danger” in a creative sense. What do you think are some of the next most ambitious creative things you’d like to explore?
Roc Marciano: Actually, I want to do more singing. I want to get more into the melody side. I want to make an album like Isaac Hayes, like Black Moses kind of shit. Just fun stuff like that. Experimenting, even though I know they want to box us in with samples and stuff like that. But I’m going to start fucking with some live instrumentation, as well. Just start expanding in every way possible. Whatever they saying we shouldn’t be doing, we going to try our hand at it.
Alchemist, I saw that some of your music is not on DSPs anymore. I was wondering if it will be returning to streaming or what’s going on with that?
Alchemist: I got some plans. I think people will be surprised, but everything will be back. Yeah, it’s going to come back. Man, remember when Taylor Swift put her music back out?
Yeah, re-recorded.
Alchemist: Right. Well, I may not re-record, but I realized that the span of my career has touched a lot of different eras and what you think everybody knows, they just might not know. And I feel like me introducing some of the old projects… Like if I re-release First Infantry and do a new video, it’s going to be a whole new first week to a whole world of people. So there’s something there that I got that I’m toying with. And for the ones that knew about it, just keep your mouth shut and act like you don’t know what I’m doing.
Roc: Exactly. Shut up.
Alchemist: You know what I’m saying? Re-rock.
Roc: See, that’s the danger we talking about. You’re not supposed to do that.
Ka passed away recently. How are y’all holding up, and what do you think his legacy is?
Roc: Well, holding up is a challenge every day when you lose somebody like Ka, so just never going to get over that.
But as far as this legacy and everything that we doing, Ka’s firmly planted in it and is a big part of all of this that we started. Ka was the only feature on my first album. He’s been there for this whole ride, and all of the respect and admiration we get, he’s due it as well. It’s cemented: Ka is one of the best lyricists to ever walk the planet. And I’m not saying that because he passed because I was saying that while he was living. And that’s just what it is. That’s the truth. And he’s going to be forever missed.
Alchemist: Ka was one of my biggest inspirations, and I still maintain that even more now. Definitely something I was able to tell him while he was here and let him know I met him through Roc. But I never let him think for a minute that I didn’t know that he was something special. And from the whole aspect of him producing, writing, and filming his own videos, that really inspired me. I felt like he was a true artist, and there was no filter between him.
Sometimes you got to explain your shit to an engineer. You got to explain your shit to a video director. There was none of that. He bypassed all that. His art was exactly from the visual. You could smell, taste, and touch what was his pure thought. And that, to this day, still motivates me, especially on the video side of things. I feel like this type of project is something that we had to do, even in the spirit of Ka, in the passing of it. Man this is something that will make him proud.
And I definitely felt like we were getting his blessings from above, as far as to keep going and keep alive in the artistry that we’ve been given. We all have a limited time on this earth, so every day matters. And Ka proved that. Look at how great his discography is in a short period of time. It’s almost scary. Like, “Damn, he did his thing.” But we never know when we’re going to check out. He’s always going to be a big inspiration, I know, to Roc and to me, as well.
What are y’all looking forward to most in 2025?
Roc: More great music and just enjoying life and our families and adding on to the legacy that we’ve been building. That’s what I’m looking forward to.
Alchemist: Yeah, I can’t even lie, it looks already like next year could potentially be the biggest year ever for me. And really, to be honest, just based on the things I have lined up already, I’m just making sure I stay healthy, man. That’s all I care about now. I want to stay here because [there are] too much blessings around the corner. So [that’s] what I’m thinking about, making sure that we are in the right shape, mind, body, and soul to receive all the blessings that are right around the corner from the work. It wasn’t like they fell out of the sky.
Roc: Ain’t that what I always be on you about?
Alchemist: That’s it. Roc be checking in on me every now and then like, “Yo, you good? You sleeping? You eating good?” Because he knows I might work to the point where I’m not even paying attention to that shit. [Laughs] But as we get older, these are the true things. The only thing on my mind, is I got to stay good so I can enjoy all this shit. Because the hard work is starting to pay off and it’s only making us work harder.
