Richmond-born, Chicago-based artist McKinley Dixon releases ‘Could’ve Been Different’ (feat. Blu & Shamir), the second single from his forthcoming album, Magic, Alive!, out 6th June via City Slang. Inventive and wearing its heart on its sleeve ‘Could’ve Been Different’ discusses the way that the past ripples beneath everything in the present. With an excellently hazy arrangement that is soulful yet widescreen, it ripples with strings, scratches, saxophones, pianos, and soulful backing vocals, framing Dixon’s poetically rapped couplets, that are diaristic and delivered with a ease: “Now we’re standing in the meadows/ Where the flowers know our name / We ain’t ran from where we grew up / Shit, we prolly go insane /Oh my god, Oh my god/ I just wanna jump off the roof.”
Of the track, Dixon says: “‘Could’ve Been Different’ is another attempt to follow, what I view as ‘the perfect closing credits:’ A summary of the story before, a different outlook on where you’re at now, and a rough question of ‘what’s going to happen to us in the future?’ To me, those make for the perfect ending when writing tales. Well, those things and mimicking the music how you would live your life: going out with an ending they will never forget.”
McKinley Dixon has been making albums for the better part of a decade, turning his experiences as a native Southerner sometimes living in Queens, and an eager student of literature into vivid reflections on joy, pain, and perseverance. On Magic, Alive!, Dixon’s most imaginative record yet, he tells the story of three kids who lose their best friend and wrestle with the subsequent turmoil. The essential twist, though, is that the trio wonder what they can do to bring their pal back or, at the very least, reconvene with him, so that their friendship does not end with mortality.
At the crux of Magic, Alive! is a broad contemplation of what constitutes magic at all. Most of us want to live in a world where our sense of possibility only increases, where magic in whatever form we decide it might take can rearrange our understanding of everyone around us. Maybe it’s not possible to raise a friend from the dead, to lift him through the floorboards of existence like some divine being. But Dixon’s larger point here is an insistence that you believe in something more than you can hold, see, hear, or read in the day’s doomed headlines; magic is everyday and everywhere, he insists, so long as you give yourself permission to reimagine what is imaginable.
Starting in October, following a support slot for Butcher Brown, Dixon will tour Europe and the UK, stopping in Glasgow, Manchester, Bristol and London. A full list of dates is below with tickets and further information available here.
McKinley Dixon – Magic, Alive! // City Slang – 06/06/25
- Watch My Hands
- Sugar Water (feat. Quelle Chris & Anjimile)
- Crooked Stick (feat. Ghais Guevera and Alfred.)
- Recitatif (feat. Teller Bank$)
- Run,Run, Run Pt.II
- We’re Outside, Rejoice!
- All the Loved Ones (What Would We Do???) (feat. ICECOLDBISHOP and Pink Siifu)
- F.F.O.L (feat. Teller Bank$)
- Listen Gentle
- Magic, Alive!
- Could’ve Been Different (feat. Blu & Shamir)
Tour Dates
Aug 2nd | City, Country code – Venue
Mar 29 | Chicago, US – SPACE *
Apr 2 | Boston, US – Brighton Music Hall *
Apr 4 | Brooklyn, US – Brooklyn Bowl *
Apr 5 | Philadelphia, US – Milkboy *
Oct 16 | Dublin, IE – The Workman’s Cellar
Oct 17 | Glasgow, UK – The Hug and Pint
Oct 18 | Manchester, UK – YES
Oct 19 | Bristol, UK – Rough Trade Bristol
Oct 21 | London, UK – The Lexington
Oct 22 | Paris, FR – Le Pop-up du Label
Oct 23 | Antwerp, BE – Trix Cafe
Oct 24 | Cologne, DE – Veedel Club
Oct 27 | Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso
Oct 28 | Hamburg, DE – Knust
Oct 30 | Stockholm, SE – Bar Brooklyn
Oct 31 | Copenhagen, DK – Vega (Ideal Bar)
Nov 1 | Berlin, DE – Kantine am Berghain
*w/ Butcher Brown
