People keep giving McKinley Dixon Lego sets for some reason.

“I got a bunch of unopened Legos,” he tells me. “I don’t really like Legos because you gotta build them. And then what if I move?”

I ask Dixon why people keep giving him Lego sets if he doesn’t like them. He describes Lego as “entry-level quirky,” suggesting that it’s the kind of thing you’d give him based on a superficial impression. But for an artist as idiosyncratic and unpredictable as McKinley Dixon, “quirky” barely scratches the surface.

McKinley Dixon’s apartment is full of quirky things — his words, not mine. While we’re talking on Zoom he holds a bat skeleton encased in glass up to the webcam, followed by a figurine from McDonalds’ Yugi-Oh collection and a mold of his own teeth from when he got fitted for a grill. Also in his collection of “gadgets and gizmos” (again, his words) is a mammoth tooth from Dave’s Rock Shop in Evanston. He makes the momentary mistake of saying that Dave’s is located in Chicago, before immediately correcting himself. Dixon recently moved to Chicago from his longtime home base in Richmond, Virginia. “Don’t let them tell you Evanston is Chicago!” he says, like any self-respecting Chicagoan would.

Dixon pulls another item off his shelf — Grant’s Annual Of Magic, a text that features heavily in the press materials accompanying his forthcoming LP, Magic, Alive! He admits though, that U.F. Grant’s magic book actually came into his life shortly after the album was already written, so it’s not an influence so much as it is a cosmic coincidence — a reward, even, for creating his triumphant fifth record, a worthy addition to his vibrant and growing catalog.

When I ask if he’s mastered any of the book’s magic tricks himself, he says no. He can make a card disappear and that’s about it. “This book is fucking freaky, dude,” he cautions. “I don’t wanna be messing with it too much.”

Despite Dixon’s reluctance to play fast and loose with the occult, the songs on Magic, Alive! often feel like spells, with Dixon as the imminently charismatic and capable magician, pulling off dense yet melodic wordplay and experimenting with new strains of sound, infusing his signature jazz rap with choral, industrial, and psychedelic turns.

On “Listen Gentle,” magic tricks are metaphors for harnessing the power of love and persistence in the face of grief; the song winds around a central hook, one of the catchiest and most heartfelt of Dixon’s career. The following title track soars on the wings of a beaming saxophone solo and McKinley Dixon’s incantatory flow: “Babies with sun in eyes/ Dancing under the moonlight/ Hooting, hollering, clapping/ And never missing a beat.” At the call-and-response chorus, a backing choir sings, “Fly, high, high/ Magic, alive!”

His dream team of collaborators — Anjimile, Shamir, Ghais Guevara, and Pink Siifu, to name just a few — take turns playing magician’s assistant. McKinley Dixon’s records are always deeply communal, and Magic, Alive! shows the collaborative spirit of Dixon and his peers and influences (in the case of rapper Quelle Chris, influences-turned-peers) at its most immersive.

Magic, Alive! is a pop-up book of everything and everyone who’s helped make McKinley Dixon the artist he is today, with stories that spring right off the page. “Generational snappin’ you know if I’m rapping/ I’m using my grandfather’s words when I write,” he boasts on the Teller Bank$-featuring “F.F.O.L.” Elsewhere, he borrows song titles from short stories by Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison (his critically beloved 2023 record, Beloved! Paradise! Jazz?! was a paean to Morrison’s legacy). On the bombastic “Run Run Run II,” the sequel to Beloved! Paradise! Jazz?! breakout track “Run, Run, Run,” Dixon proclaims, “My target audience is anyone with a heart.” It’s an ambitious statement, but he’s proven time and time again that the hype is well-deserved; he’s worthy of the colossal spells he’s casting.

Read on to learn more about Magic, Alive! and the works of art that inspired it.

Black Milk’s If There’s A Hell Below (2014)

MCKINLEY DIXON: I feel like a lot of people think that my influences are, you know, Kendrick Lamar. It’s a very obvious link, because there was pre-To Pimp A Butterfly and post-To Pimp A Butterfly. That’s just what that is. But in actuality for my music, I put my lineage at three specific artists: Black Milk, Quelle Chris, and Oddisee. Those would be like, actually the artists that I feel like I draw direct influence from. To Pimp A Butterfly exists, and you cannot ignore that. That is like a high-concept rap album, you know? But my actual intentional things and the people that I’ve always listened to and I’ve always been fans of would be Quelle, Black Milk, and Oddisee.

Black Milk has this record — I think I have it, let’s see. [He goes to his shelf and pulls out If There’s A Hell Below on vinyl.]

Black Milk — Detroit producer-rapper combo. [If There’s A Hell Below] blends storytelling in a really just concise, cohesive way while also being very enticing and captivating. I feel like storytelling can be boring as fuck. There’s so many books, dude, and so many books that suck. So I feel like with this album, it’s very good at being like, “Here’s the story.” It’s got a bunch of oldschool-ass titles. You know, and we’re just making the best record that we can make. One of my favorite records of all time.

Oddisee

DIXON: I don’t think I have an Oddisee record. Oddisee is from Maryland, so the lineage there is that, at a young age, I was sort of introduced to him as a person who raps and uses instruments and has a band — you know, like his band, Good Company. He really loved being from Maryland, even though I had conflicting feelings about being from Maryland. So Oddisee overarchingly just inspires me. Plus he’s also very worldwide, he’s very worldly. He tours consistently with and without his band. He sort of has this really great level as an artist that’s just inspirational to me, to attain in general, you know?

I was born in Maryland, in Annapolis, and I spent my childhood there. But there wasn’t really much of a rap scene at the level that I was at. And then Richmond — Richmond’s a punk city, right? So there wasn’t too much of a rap scene pre-me. There was the one-offs, like Nickelus F, and there was producers like DJ Harrison and them, but even those cats were only one generation above me. You know what I mean?

Do you feel like more of a Maryland rapper than a Richmond rapper?

DIXON: Hell no! Fuck no! Fuck no. I spent most of my time in Maryland, but like all of my formative years were in Richmond. My first record was in Richmond. My band is in Richmond. We go back home to Richmond all the time. I’m a Richmond rapper, even though now I live in Chicago.

Quelle Chris

DIXON: I like Quelle because I feel like with this record, Magic, Alive! is the first record where I feel like it’s a story more so in the literal sense. It’s the first record that’s me trying to write something from scratch in a way, and trying to find a balance between giving myself to the world while also saving myself for myself. You know what I mean? Like, Beloved! Paradise! Jazz?! was my view of these things through Toni Morrison’s lens and what I’ve learned. For My Mama was a direct, one-of-one dealing with the passing of my friend. The Importance Of Self Belief is just me being a young motherfucker, and then Who Taught You To Hate Yourself? is me realizing what any of it means. It’s all sort of me, but with [Magic, Alive!] it’s the first one where it’s kind of like, “Okay, what if I just tried to write like the greatest story ever?” You know, whatever that looks like.

I think Quelle Chris is really great because he’s incredibly prolific all while being incredibly elusive, you know what I mean? I think he does a great job of being like — if he don’t wanna be there, he don’t wanna be there. And you can go to any one of his records and see a direct lineage with instrumentation, or just working with the community or just being someone that’s prominent while also not being out all the time. He’s very picky with the stuff on his records.

Animators And Artists Like Satoshi Kon, Masaki Yuasa, Taiyō Matsumoto

DIXON: I really like animation. I feel like animation does a really good job of telling a story quickly and efficiently. I think that the similarities with Magic, Alive! and animation is that I’m finding ways to make these impactful and concise moments. I love making music and I could make songs that are long as hell if I wanted to, but I think that it’s interesting to try to put so much emotion and feeling into such a short amount of time.

Animated films often don’t get the same credit as their live-action counterparts. Much like me — I don’t be getting the same motion as a lot of my live-action counterparts!

So who’s the live action counterpart to you?

DIXON: Everybody that’s not taking time to check out for me! That’s the live-action counterpart. Everybody that opposes me! Put that in there!

I will, I promise! [Laughing.] Are there any specific animated shows or movies that were at the forefront of your mind while you were making this record?

DIXON: I always credit Satoshi Kon — rest in peace — famous for Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika. He had the quote where he’s like — he was a director and he said that the live camera doesn’t move as fast as his thoughts, so he switched to animation. That’s a really impactful quote for everything that I do, but specifically because it is sort of like — trying to be ungovernable, and trying to make the ungovernable happen. You know? Don’t worry about it being impossible because there’s a way that it will always be possible. I love Satoshi Kon, big influence with this record, because Magic, Alive! is all about MAGIC, you know? Doing whatever, following your dreams, and a bunch of kids and shit, dude. So that’s pretty cool.

I do a fuckton of animation. I’m working on an animation right now. It just takes forever. So I don’t do it as, like, a gig, you know? My major in college was animation, for lack of a better term. So a lot of my older stuff has a lot of that with it. But it’s just different now. I did all that so long ago. But I feel like everything that I say now is a part of my history already, in a weird way. A lot of my shit back in the day had some of that. But nowadays it’s just so much goddamn money. And so much time. And everybody wants the Tic-Tacs, you know? And I don’t do the Tic-Tacs.

TikToks?

DIXON: Yes, the small short platform internet video. No, no short form shit. Nope. I want the video to be 10 minutes long! I wanna be able to eat my food! What’s the point of me microwaving it or whatever if I can’t eat it? No, I’m kidding. But I think that Satoshi Kon would’ve hated TikTok.

Satoshi Kon’s great because he dabbles in like, dreams and reality and stuff, but it’s still very much hinging on the fact that we’re all like, in it. His reality is reality, you know? But he makes his characters really exaggerated and the whimsy doesn’t just stop at the surface. Like, oh yeah, he walks like that because he walks like that, whatever. That playfulness is hard to mimic. Just in general, but if you wanna talk about magic, it’s something that’s needed.

I also really like Masaki Yuasa. He did Lu Over The Wall, Night Is Short, Walk On Girl, The Tatami Galaxy, and Kaiba and stuff.

Tekkonkinkreet is a really beautiful movie from 2006. It’s based on a manga. [Taiyō Matsumoto] who wrote it is another one of my inspirations, but the movie itself is a big inspiration to me.

I saw it in the 2000s, and it was just a beautiful movie that — it does three stories alongside each other, and it beautifully captures an ever-changing city and how that affects its residents, especially the ones that are closer to the ground of it. It’s hard to describe as well as that movie does. It just captures the whimsy and magic through a kid’s eyes, but also the harsh realities of a changing gentrified city around children. Taiyō Matsumoto is this really great manga artist and writer who also did Ping Pong and Sunny. I love that all of his stories are sort of coming of age stories that aren’t directly about kids coming of age. It’s more so about this task that represents coming of age to these children.

Zora Neale Hurston

DIXON: I kept Toni Morrison off this list for obvious reasons, because — I actually am not influenced by Toni Morrison at all. Surprise! Didn’t think you’d see that one, did you? [Laughs.] No. I just thought it was too obvious. I got a whole fucking record about her.

I have a lot of Zora Neale Hurston books. She has this book that was released recently [posthumously]. It’s called Hitting A Straight Lick With A Crooked Stick. It’s a bunch of short stories and it inspired the title “Crooked Stick” on the record, which is track three I think? She’s great. I have her book Their Eyes Were Watching God. [He holds up a copy.] I reference that all the time because it’s such a fucking good book, but also it’s a cool fucking thing to say in any situation, even if it doesn’t make any sense. You know what I mean? I also have Barracoon, which is just this beautiful book — it’s not beautiful, but it’s beautifully written about one of the last people to come over on a slave ship. She’s just such a phenomenal writer and just gets stories that are so specific to her that no one else could write. I would say she inspired this record a lot.

Is there anything in her storytelling or craft that you try — consciously or unconsciously — to put into your records as you’re building them and telling their stories? I feel like we keep coming back to storytelling.

DIXON: So one of the big things about her is that she do not change. She don’t switch up when she’s talking to somebody. Like she’ll say it exactly how they said it, so I think that’s really cool. And I try to emulate that and just sort of mimic exactly what the feeling is. Don’t worry about if they don’t understand, because as long as you understand, it’ll fit within the context of everything that is being written, you know? And I think she does a great job of that. Not really giving a hoot if you don’t get what she’s saying.

On the dead homies. Rest in peace Satoshi Kon and Zora Neale Hurston, y’all probably would’ve fucked with each other, highkey.

Magic, Alive! is out 6/6 via City Slang.