Burning Desire

Mike

explicit

Released on 10/13/23 by 10k
Main artists: MIKE
Genre: Hip-Hop/Rap

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There's not much truth to the idea that a switch flips in your brain when you turn 25 and your prefrontal cortex finally completes its final push towards a mature perspective. But it is worth noting that NYC rapper-producer MIKE hit this age-related landmark roughly around the same time Burning Desire dropped. Whether it's that milestone, or the more likely explanation that he's honed his craft across a dozen solo albums since his teenage years, this feels like his next big level-up moment.

The conflicted, paradoxical sense of youthful energy and frustrated dejection that earned him at least a few fitting comparisons to friend and mentor Earl Sweatshirt has fused into a bundle-of-nerves force that positions his considerable musical presence as part of a collective strength: familial, ancestral, and artistic. So he reps the kind of people he's happy to spend his time and money on because he wants to build a bigger future (with a lover in "Baby Jesus"; with his art and his crew in "Billboards with Anuoluwapo 'Sandra' Majekodunmi"), or at least maintain his creative momentum in the face of skepticism from outside (hater breakdown "THEY DON'T STOP IN THE RAIN with TAKA") and within (the anxiety-fighting "What U Say U Are"). It's a strength of his that he does so as someone whose understated tendencies make every muttered utterance—from confessional details to sardonic punchlines—feel like a long-simmering koan.

He raps like someone who's thinking out loud, but about things he's been dwelling on forever, to the point where he reveals more about his world in a one-verse, 90-second burst than most rappers his age do on their entire social media feed. His beats have that similar spontaneous-sounding but lived-in quality, torquing and distorting and pitch-tweaking his loops until even the oddest touches (like the tape-warped slow jam in "Set the Mood" or the rock-unsteady mutant skank of "Billboards") feel worthy of the kind of avant-classic material that underground heads have been cultivating since Madlib's first mushroom trip.

MIKE shows confidence without complacency here, thriving on the idea that he can acknowledge something bigger than himself without canceling out the idea of ascending higher than he could've ever expected. And Burning Desire holds the weight of someone who's young enough to acknowledge the difficulty of going through it but has finally started to grasp how to get through it, too. © Nate Patrin/Qobuz

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Burning Desire

MIKE

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Intro with Klein