Key Takeaways
- The album GOLDFISH highlights how Hit-Boy and The Alchemist balance production and lyricism in equal measure.
- Their verses explore themes like independence, legacy, and resilience, grounded in personal experience.
- Collaborations with Conway The Machine, Havoc, and Boldy James bring added depth and contrast to the project.
Two of Hip Hop’s sharpest minds have been circling each other for years. Long before GOLDFISH, Hit-Boy and The Alchemist tested their chemistry on the 2023 single “Slipping Into Darkness,” a rap clinic that proved two producers could share the mic without stepping on each other’s frequencies. Then came THEODORE & ANDRE, their stripped-down 2024 EP that hinted at a full-scale collaboration but still left space for curiosity. GOLDFISH is that curiosity realized: A full-length exchange between peers who’ve spent decades behind the boards and are now just as confident in front of them.
The album’s title nods to creative loops and self-containment, yet the music feels borderless. Over dusty drums, velvet basslines, and sample flips that sound like old film reels, they build a world where self-reflection and flexing coexist. Hit-Boy raps like a man finally free from the industry’s paperwork maze; Alchemist writes with a veteran’s calm, poking at time, purpose, and survival.
This list homes in on the lyrics that define those dual vantage points. Casual quotables aside, they’re glimpses into how two master craftsmen translate years of producing for legends into verses about independence, legacy, and the hunger that never fades (also, a hard-hitting line or three from the album’s equally impressive featured artists, including fellow beatsmith-emcee Havoc). Track by track, we highlight the lines that turn GOLDFISH from a collaboration into a statement.
1. Doing My Best
Hit-Boy: “Silence is power, sometimes you gotta keep s**t between you and God, send a prayer for spots got raided by the SWAT, this one is for project girls raised in Watts...”
2. Business Merger
The Alchemist: “We don’t do collaboration, it's a business merger, cut a pie, split a burger, and make it stretch like a fitness worker, I’m on my s**t for certain, on stage checkin’ the mic behind a custom Dr. Romanelli curtain...”
3. Show Me The Way
Hit-Boy: “This about the time when it start to make sense, I might never return to the person I was before this s**t, Hit-Boy, but I’m more than hits, my life a movie, and lately it’s scary as horror flicks, but I find the beauty...”
4. Mick & Cooley
Conway The Machine: “E-Murda keep a blade, he give your face a large cut, when I do the deals, I get the large cut, the pickup 150, not the Ford truck, we ain't shootin’ out the car, we do the walk-ups, glock with a switch, it fan out, it got us starstruck...”
5. Ask For Me
The Alchemist: “I make sure that every day’s an event, I’m a dope addict and my addiction pays the rent, tryna retrace the steps, can’t even count the amount of change I spent, turnin’ records out to a great extent...”
6. Ricky
Hit-Boy: “Two-parent household, yeah, for us that’s a fantasy, watchin’ Boyz N The Hood, I relate to the agony, like stealin’ from the store, coming from broken families, when Ricky get popped at the end, that scene still be sad to me...”
7. Groupie Love
The Alchemist: “I used to listen to Christopher Martin, analyze, try to pick it apart, that’s how I get it started, mind blowing, exactly how a beat should sound, something delicious that I could wrap my teeth around...”
8. Celebration Moments
Havoc: “Heavy is the head that wear that crown, I want it now, the lifestyle, the vows that I swore to hold it down, not talkin’ about then, but who control it now? Tuned out all the noise ‘cause some of y’all is wild...”
9. Home Improvement
Hit-Boy: “Nothing to prove, these emotional wounds, I spill ‘em over the groove, Tim Allen holding a tool, this is home improvement, forever I’m a student, had to play the sample back twice, I went and looped it...”
10. Recent Memory
The Alchemist: “I wear a big jacket ‘cause life is frigid, the mountaintop is nowhere to live, but it’s a nice place to visit, heavy is the head with the crown attached, pourin’ my pride inside a cup then down the hatch...”
11. Walk In Faith
Hit-Boy: “I got a firm grip on who I really am, n**gas say they hustle, but they really scam, if I go to let it off, will it jam?”
12. Not Much
Boldy James: “From the land of the scandalous to the zone of the misfits, evangelists show you how to turn water into Bisquick, this dog got a stutter, come with fingers like some fish sticks...”
13. Drawing Bridges
Hit-Boy: “Glued in with the hood, had to tell my young homie, ‘You should pace that,’ you could hold more in the Chase app, hit my line, know I’m sendin’ straight pack...”
14. All Gas No Breaks
Jay Worthy: “Do pretty good, never pressed for money, to the block, I’m matrimony, king of the bity like John Sacrimoni, ask George Clinton, I bet he know me...”
15. God Is Great
The Alchemist: “All this came from makin’ faders fly, dinner’s served, I don’t finish till the plate is dry, I could see a silver glow in the grayest sky, you could book me for a show, but the pay is high...”