another triumph of ghetto engineering

Album review

Open Mike Eagle might not have set out to make a trilogy. But on the heels of his 2020 personal crisis-point reflection Anime, Trauma and Divorce and the nostalgic perseverance meditations of 2022's lockdown-reckoning Component System with the Auto Reverse, Another Triumph of Ghetto Engineering feels like the third-act breakthrough, the resolution where he finally seems to have found a way over a lot of those worries. And since that route goes through a post-pandemic embrace of art-driven communality, this comparatively short nine-song release feels like the world's most sprawling and joyful shout-out track. The comedic geniality that Mike has always deftly fused with his vulnerable sorrows and his outward frustrations finally feels like it has won out again, even if those other moods still linger. (Check "the wire s3 e1," where his battle with ennui sets up a verse where guest rapper Blu fiercely mocks doomed fakers.) It's not just coming from Open Mike Eagle, who slings DOOM-heir idiomatic brilliance all over the Quelle Chris screwed-and-chopped rock dirge "I bled on stage at first ave," and finds beatific catharsis in the hazy boogie glow of "mad enough to aim a pyramid at you." It shines through in his family (that's his mother's bejeweled hand on the cover) and his friends—especially frequent and longtime collaborators Video Dave, Still Rift, and a rapper-mode Hannibal Buress as Eshu Tune, who are all their own kind of witty on Kenny Segal's glimmering, wavy, loping "WFLD 32." Their triumph in finding kindred, defiant weirdos radiates outwards, until cuts like the gratified career overview "we should have made otherground a thing" and its we got people though companion piece "Dave said these are the liner notes" evolve from crew-building namechecks to a deathless testament to the power of 21st century independent hip-hop. © Nate Patrin/Qobuz