Description

Open Mike Eagle – Brick Body Kids Still Daydream (LP) [2 Blossom Records LPMMG00106C2]

With the first song of his 2014 masterpiece, Dark Comedy, Open Mike Eagle reintroduced himself by defining his style: “I’m bad at sarcasm so I work in absurdity.” On that album, Mike deconstructed our overstimulated and over-surveilled society with ease and caustic wit. But what do you do when the world warps and bends into a shape so absurd that it can no longer be exaggerated?

Brick Body Kids Still Daydream is a searingly political record for systolic political times. It chronicles the life cycle of the Robert Taylor Homes, a housing project on the South side of Chicago that was demolished completely ten years ago. Families that had lived under the same roof for three generations were forced to scatter, condemned by bureaucrats and faceless cranes and public indifference. Mike Eagle brings the Robert Taylor Homes back to life–literally, with arms and eyes and a head like the dome of a stadium–and fights until the last brick is made to crumble.

Eagle has earned rave reviews in Pitchfork, LA Weekly, and wherever brilliant, avant-garde rap is appreciated. Brick Body Kids Still Daydream is his most overtly political work to date and puts to use all the dazzling technical skills he’s perfected over more than a decade at the forefront of rap’s underground. In chaotic and increasingly fractured times, it has a few crucial things to bring to your attention.