Atlanta’s fourth and final season premiered last night and as usual, the Stephen Glover-penned episode was full of cultural Easter Eggs and “if you know, you know” pop culture references. The premiere episode, “The Most Atlanta,” drew inspiration from It Follows, MF Doom’s death, and “Jennifer,” the knife-wielding, electric wheelchair-bound woman who became Twitter famous during the George Floyd protests. The MF Doom reference is the one that had fans doing detective work, though.
The legendary rapper, who obscured his identity and biography as best as he could and in some ways epitomized the “underground,” was declared dead by his surviving wife on December 31, 2020—but she ultimately revealed that he had actually passed two months earlier, on Halloween. In “The Most Atlanta,” Paper Boi informs Darius that [fictional] legendary rapper Blueblood’s death was just announced on the radio, even though he died three months prior. This news sends Paper Boi into a Blueblood wormhole as he starts listening to the late rapper’s final album. Blueblood, voiced by Earl Sweatshirt, leaves clues for a scavenger hunt via the new raps that leads Paper Boi to the late rapper’s funeral. When he gets there, he gets the unfortunate news that he was just the fifth person to solve the hunt and make it there .
Earl voicing Blueblood led folks to believe those Blueblood tracks are actually songs from Earl and heralded hip-hop producer The Alchemist’s fabled secret Youtube album. Back in 2019, Alchemist tweeted that the duo had uploaded an entire project on the platform under a fake name. Three years later, the album still hasn’t been found, or at least, hasn’t been made public or found by fans. Obviously, Earl and the writers on Atlanta could’ve written the Blueblood tracks specifically for the episode, as Donald Glover has done himself in the past, but there’s a correlation between the secret album and the scavenger hunt nonetheless.
Hopefully, as more people watch these new Atlanta episodes, the hunt for the secret Earl and Alchemist album will be reignited. The rap game has been oversatured as of late with endless, instant-gratification releases. Hunting for and finally finding this project would be a breath of fresh air. Diggin’ in the crates is an age-old tradition, but that tradition is becoming obsolete as everything is at our fingertips these days. We’ve been taking music for granted and this hunt can hopefully help fans experience the magic of stumbling upon new sounds.