McKinley Dixon : Magic, Alive!
In spite of human vanity and a centuries-long pursuit, immortality has yet to be achieved. The fountain of youth was a bust, vampires aren’t real, and no amount of infusions of younger blood is going to stave off the inevitable. Only figures such as Mozart or Shakespeare ever achieve anything approaching immortality, their works living on centuries beyond their connection to this mortal coil, which were considerably brief by today’s standards. But beyond the myths and legends, eternal life is just a mirage conjured by grief’s bargaining stage, a too-good-to-be-true lottery prize that we continue to chase because of the overwhelming fear of death itself.
McKinley Dixon knows about grief. The Richmond-raised, Chicago-based hip-hop artist’s two prior albums, 2021’s For My Mama and Anyone Who Look Like Her and 2023’s Beloved? Paradise? Jazz!?, each navigated themes of loss through rich arrangements of live jazz-funk, animating his songs with joy and vibrancy even as he meditated on how fragile life really is. Magic, Alive! continues a similar kind of exploration, reframing grief through a story of three kids struggling with the death of a close friend. But that mourning takes a turn toward the (hypothetically) supernatural early on in the first single “Sugar Water,” ascending in its groove toward a verse driven by a hypnotic upright bassline as Dixon raises the specter of, well, raising specters: “Sun been getting its revenge, feel the heat you hear it buzzing/’How we raise him from the ground?’ type shit discussing with my cousins.”
Resurrection is just one of the forms of prestidigitation that Dixon conjures up through Magic, Alive!, an album that leans heavier on an everyday kind of magic than supernatural feats, on living more than death. In looking through the eyes of kids, Dixon imbues the album with a sense of nostalgia and warmth, whether through a loved one pulling their own sleight of hand (“He said “baby boy just come here, Never fear, Lemme pull a quarter from behind yo ear“) or a mother’s wrath when a supposed bad influence won’t stop coming around (“If you don’t stop playing with me, my mama said she gon’ whoop your ass“). More often than not, though, as on the buzzing and intense “Recitatif,” Dixon’s dizzying and nimble deliver growing more frantic as it progresses, the weight of loss hangs heavy: “Outta the house, just til the light/Look through the screen door, seen when we danced all night/Don’t cry, skin the tone that let us hide in night sky.”
So much of the magic that abounds throughout the album is a result of its fluid live-band arrangements, Dixon and his collaborators crafting jazz rap that’s—true to its title—alive. It’s at turns gentle, as on the concise opener “Watch My Hands” showcasing Eli Owens’ graceful plucks of harp, and elsewhere richly soulful, the extended jazz-funk intro of “We’re Outside, Rejoice!”, guided by Etienne Stoufflet’s saxophone, eventually leading toward a celebratory call-and-response gospel chorus of “We outside! Rejoice, rejoice!” that offers joy and light amid the undercurrent of grief. And the layers of lush instrumentation on “Listen, Gentle,” intertwining harp, piano, trumpet and flute, simply come together gorgeously.
A final act of enchantment happens in album closer “Could’ve Been Different,” when, faced with the anxiety of what happens tomorrow, Dixon’s narrator speaks to a poster on his wall, who answers him back through the voice of L.A. rap veteran Blu: “McKinley you showed me/The importance of self-belief/Be loved, be jazzed/You don’t gotta be me.” It’s a sweetly surreal moment on an album that reconciles the tragic with the fantastical, a soulful moment of levity amid a coming-of-age journey that winds through fantasies of necromancy in order to arrive at closure. Magic, Alive! feels epic in that sense, so rich and overflowing with sound, meaning and feeling, even if it’s ultimately a fairly short ride at just 35 minutes long. Dixon reminds us of the preciousness of the moment and the wonders that surround us in the here and now, a blend of wisdom and groove that’s crafted to endure.
Label: City Slang
Year: 2025
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McKinley Dixon : Magic, Alive!
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