Open Mike Eagle:
Open Mike Eagle spent the 2010s finding comedy in rap music and American nightmares. On albums like Brick Body Kids Still Daydream and Dark Comedy, he delivered hilarious socio-political insights via half-sung verses laid atop progressive production. Acclaim from publications like Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and NPR coincided with headlining solo tours and top-billing at events like Adult Swim Festival. Between studio sessions, Eagle co-founded The New Negroes, a standup-meets-music variety show that explores perceptions of Blackness. He and co-founder Baron Vaughn brought the show to Upright Citizens Brigade, Comedy Central, and venues around the U.S.
With over a dozen solo and collaborative projects to his name, Eagle has spent his career redefining and expanding the parameters of “art rap,” the term he coined as a shorthand for leftfield and avant-garde rap music. On Dark Comedy, he chronicled everything from smartphone addiction to the realities of being an indie artist in the streaming era with self-deprecation and side-splitting absurdity. 2017’s Brick Body Kids Still Daydream marked Eagle’s shift toward examining trauma, wading through the rubble of Chicago’s demolished Robert Taylor Homes, where several family members once lived. Anime, Trauma, and Divorce, his first full-length album on Auto Reverse Records, was among the most personal projects of his career. Neighborhood Gods Unlimited expanded that autobiographical and surrealist language further, turning an unrealized television concept into an album with an opening theme, flashbacks, a climax, and commercials.
Kenny Segal:
Kenny Segal is a Los Angeles-based producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist whose work has helped shape some of the most adventurous corners of independent rap and experimental music. A longtime fixture of LA’s underground, Segal has built a reputation for productions that feel tactile, strange, melodic, and deeply lived-in. His recent collaborations span acclaimed projects with rappers including billy woods and K-the-I???, as well as work with jazz trio Human Error Club and bluesy indie rocker Benjamin Booker. On DOOMED!, Segal brings that full range into focus, constructing a singular sonic world around Mike Eagle’s fractured romantic postmortem.
