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http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19477-open-mike-eagle-dark-comedy/
8.0
Somewhere between Richard Pryor going platinum and the latest episode of Louie, the establishment of comedy as a filter between the outside world and an individual's churning-brain anxiety took a deep hold in the mainstream pop-culture consciousness. The more that once-uncommon voices are allowed to speak as themselves, the likelier it is that they'll slip their grievances and worries in under the cover of slyly built jokes.
Open Mike Eagle's solo career pushed him from Project Blowed cog to a spotlight that gave him space to ruminate over his fights against orthodoxy, starting with hip-hop's (his first two album titles: Unapologetic Art Rap and Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes) and working his way outwards from there. In the process, he's found a strong lane as an MC who cracks wise in both senses of the term. For each handful of fans that came to him through a connection with the Los Angeles underground hip-hop community, there's at least one who heard about him through stand-up stars like Hannibal Buress or Paul F. Tompkins.
So his latest album, Dark Comedy, pipes in a laugh track on its semi-titular opening track, "Dark Comedy Morning Show," and Mike Eagle makes sure it comes in clear after the more raw-nerved lines—"I flew off the handle, and boy are my arms tired"; "If another dude calls me a racist, I'm'a snap"; "There's mad shootings on the news/ Unless it's in the Chi, cause blacks and Mexicans can die". The song sums up the whole album's "on that laugh to keep from crying tip" operating mode in just three verses, but there are new angles and transformative concepts that keep the balance unpredictably gallows-humored throughout.
"Informations" sets up some Tetsuo the Iron Man-meets-Videodrome body horror that plays to smartphone-addiction fears, then leavens it with scatological humor ("When I pass gas it sounds like a fax machine") and a sense that he's actually thrilled with the man-machine fusion. The line in "Doug Stamper (Advice Raps)" where he admonishes white rappers to "Quit rappin' in your hood voice/ Sound like a clown 100-pounder that took 'roids" both cuts closer and leans goofier when he actually imitates it as a dopey "HARR RAAR RAAR RAAR RAAAGH". Even when he threatens to lean towards unadulterated stress-rap, he undercuts it by titling his most severe bout of venting "Sadface Penance Raps" and cutting it off after less than a minute and a half under the pretext that the beat malfunctioned. The sung hook, lifted from They Might Be Giants' "Don't Let's Start", that falls victim to this truncated ending: "No one in the world ever gets what they want, and that is beautiful."
Mike is an artist who thrives on working through some potentially inaccessible or confrontational thoughts and feelings using a very upfront and deceptively easygoing way with jokes and wordplay. That's not just in the references he throws around ("Thirsty Ego Raps" gives not-entirely-non sequitur nods to Dave Gahan and Michel'le in consecutive lines), or his knack for internal rhymes and verse construction that actually scan like well-timed improv asides; it's also in how he builds up a self-portrait that establishes his own agency while still opening himself up to the possibilities of camaraderie and community.
"Qualifiers," which he recorded a live version of in a laundromat, should stand as his newest signature song for that reason. He pits party-rocking impulses alongside unglamorous but important fatherhood work by rhyming "get up and dance" with "I wipe my son's ass and get shit on my hands," jabs at hood-pass-hungry vultures questioning his cred ("Fuck you if you're a white man that assumes I speak for black folks/ Fuck you if you're a white man who thinks I can't speak for black folks"), and builds a hook that upends ego-tripping with weasel words: "we the best, mostly/ Sometimes the freshest rhymers/ We the tightest kinda/ Respect my qualifiers". It's frank modesty in terms that any independent artist ever prone to self-second-guessing should recognize.
That nervous energy radiates through everyone in Mike's orbit, whether it's a characteristically mellow/jittery Kool A.D. feigning ignorance and riffing absurdist logic on "Informations" or Buress turning basic common courtesy into snarky older-brother wisdom on "Doug Stamper (Advice Raps)" with a Biz-caliber rap verse. (Sample line: "Wash your hands when you touch your l'il dirty dick/ And dry 'em off before you come tryin' to shake my shit".) Even the beats—Ultra Combo's Cloud Rap for Airports-esque "Very Much Money (Ice King Dream)", Dibia$e's chunky synths bouncily ambling in low-g on the dream gig with a catch story "Jon Lovitz (Fantasy Booking Yarn)", Jeremiah Jae laying down treated strings that sound like aluminum being table sawed on "A History of Modern Dance"—hang on a precipice between whimsical irreverence and real to-the-gut emotional immediacy.
It all builds off a feeling that this anxiety touches everyone, that even if Mike's a singular kind of weirdo, his worries are our worries. So he's feeling out the process of coming to happy terms with the weirdness he and his friends inhabit, while still wishing it came with easy communication or self-sufficient success. Whether it's through casual observation or the to-the-bone identity struggles, Open Mike Eagle's overlap between amusing insights and uncomfortable truths makes for one of the most compelling indie-rap listens of the year so far.
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