Erykah Badu & The Alchemist find freedom in the spaces between

It’s been sixteen years since Badu's last album proper, and eleven since her mixtape But You Caint Use My Phone, and the woman who helped define neo-soul – then spent much of her career flouting its expectations – is back with a record wonderfully unbothered with making a grand entrance. Instead, she settles into Maman's dusty, hypnotic production like she's sauntered into someone’s home and started shuffling their furniture around.

It's a fascinating pairing. The Alchemist makes an art of finding the forgotten corners of music, manufacturing little worlds from the fragments that other producers might have discarded, while Badu treats rhythm as something to argue with. Where The Alchemist’s loops establish boundaries, Badu finds the crooks between them, and it's in that and other contrasts that Before the World Blows offers its most distinctive charms. The quieter, gentler moments here feel both unexpected and captivating, suggesting that the album is best heard in a laidback, thoughtful mood, the kind where you feel free to light an incense stick and sit and gaze into the room's middle distance, tuning out all else.

Opening track “Echos” sets the tone for Before the World Blows' appetite for indulgence, stretching out our reintroduction to Badu's particularities over more than seven minutes. It's a confident decision, but Badu has never been found wanting in that regard, let's face it. “Witch Doctor” is similarly unhurried, with an accompanying video that throws back to the imagery of her 2010 hit "Window Seat", inviting a nostalgia for a time in Badu's unique career that might well now be fully consigned to the past.

Still, it’s refreshing to hear an artist revisit their own mythology without seeming trapped by it. Badu has always been a "mystic," an "oracle," an "otherworldly" being – apparently the possibility of a woman simply being an exceptional, intelligent musician is not exciting enough – but with Before the World Blows, she shows that she's even more interesting as a provocateur with an impeccable ear for sounding ever so slightly out of joint.

Never one to let prestige get in the way of her own brand of sophistication, Badu's vocal runs are perfectly imperfect in their phrasing, as hypnotic and playful as ever. The album's guest spots mostly only enrich the experience – Steve Lacy's melodies on “To The Moon (Plan C)”, Thundercat's restless musicianship on “They Ain't You”, and Earl Sweatshirt's subdued delivery on “I Know That Man” – all bringing something distinctive to Before the World Blows' overflowing table of ideas, resistant to categorisation.

That said, with a generous runtime of 60+ minutes, the album's surplus of talents working outside of the box sometimes threatens to do too much, risking boiling all that eccentricity down to something weirdly commonplace sounding. Songs like “Abracadabra” and “Hot BiBi (Apostle 2)” come across as less substantial in a collection otherwise committed to boundless experimentation. The atmosphere is seductive, but does seduction alone absolve a song completely of its need to actually go somewhere? Possibly not.

Regardless, to their credit, both Badu and The Alchemist seem to understand precisely where to draw the line between artistic maturity and a retreat into what you might call "good taste." On the evidence of Before the World Blows, the duo have earned the luxury of taking their time, and in most cases they know exactly what to do with it.