Unlock the Soundtrack of 2025: The 22 Albums That Will Shape Your Year (And Your Workout)

Ever wonder what happens when the raw storytelling power of hip-hop collides with the intricate magic of jazz and boom-bap? Well, McKinley Dixon’s fifth album, Magic, Alive!, answers that question with a flamboyant punch. Yeah, it’s bursting at the seams—with too many guests, layers dense enough to make your head spin, and metaphors stacked like a skyscraper—but that’s precisely what makes it a mesmerizing ride. Picture three kids grappling with loss, conjuring resurrection through a lyrical spellbook that’s part narrative, part emotional excavation. It’s ambitious, sometimes overwhelming, yet utterly compelling—a sonic tapestry that flips hip-hop’s usual playbook and tells stories that linger long after the last note drops. Honestly, when Dixon spits, “To live forever is to tell the stories of who light up ya eyes,” you can’t help but feel the weight of that truth. Could this be hip-hop’s new blueprint for immortality? Dive in and find out. LEARN MORE

Everything about the fifth album from rising Chicago-based rapper McKinley Dixon is too much—too many guests, overcomplicated arrangements, overstuffed metaphors and references. But the ambitious scope of Magic, Alive! is too powerful to resist—over the course of its eleven tracks, Dixon tells the story of three kids mourning the death of their friend and resolving to resurrect him with magic. With jazz, rock, and old-school boom-bap elements, the record plays like a series of interconnected, well-observed short stories, a display of hip-hop’s limitless possibilities. “To live forever is to tell the stories of who light up ya eyes,” he rhymes in the closing title track. “We ran, we danced, survived, we fly.”