You know that little voice inside your head that kind of narrates and enunciates your thoughts? Like, it will rattle off commands for you to do throughout the day, interrupt conversations with invasive memories, maybe a joke you shouldn’t say out loud, but it tells you that you shouldn’t say it out loud after you think it. You don’t want to detract from the conversation with your puns, so you listen to the voice. This took you out of the conversation, though, and now you have to catch up instead of continuing this internal dialogue. Call it consciousness, or whatever. Just don’t overthink it and get into questions about what consciousness is and whether or not there is a mind-body duality or if it is really all just one thing. It doesn’t really matter, especially if you have other voices in your head; not like some kind of 1960s interpretation of schizophrenia in a movie, but like memories in the tones of other people’s or character’s voices that resonate somewhere in your electric thinking meat.
Well, one of those voices from other people that has been entering my internal social club is from Open Mike Eagle. I have been a casual fan of his since 2014’s Dark Comedy, but my hip hop interests for a long time were always secondary to various shades of rock and metal. Last year, though, hip hop became more of a focus for my fandom, and with that came watching some YouTube channels about the genre (shout out to Dead End Hip Hop, FD Signifier, and The Company Man [one second applause]). Another one of those hip hop content creators has been Open Mike Eagle, whose calm presence is full of pragmatic and laugh-out-loud takes with a good dose of humility and silliness. Then Previous Industries dropped Service Merchandise, the first full-length from the hip hop trio comprised of Open Mike Eagle, Video Dave, and STILL RIFT. I was pretty into the album and realized that I had been sleeping on so much indie rap that over a year later, I am still catching up. Thankfully, the veteran indie rapper/YouTube creator/podcast host was also wrapping up his ninth solo LP, Neighborhood Gods Unlimited.
I’ve seen two other reviews for this record, so far, without searching for them. Both of these bring up how Neighborhood Gods Unlimited is an album about technology and the internet, but I don’t hear it. Did I miss a press release that clouded those reviews? Are we listening to the same album? Like, the thing is called Neighborhood Gods Unlimited, and to me, that is what this album is about, in a sense. See, OME has given us a variety of song topics that are all personal to him and relatable to the listener that introduce colorful characters (Gods) from the everyday places (Neighborhood) interwoven with and alongside personal narratives. There is mention of technology, sure, and reflections on it’s impact to our lives, but this album isn’t a manifesto or utopian/dystopian narrative. The tech that OME brings up is everyday shit like cell phones, ear buds, internet videos, and even reviews/reviewers (which presumably are read online, unless OME is very, very dedicated to print media). This tech is just how he and the rest of us exist.
The first neighborhood god we are introduced to is Old Steve, a character down at the barbershop who seems to be pretty deep into conspiracy theories, on opening track “woke up knowing everything (opening theme).” I am fairly certain that Mike doesn’t think about ‘chemtrails full of beta rays,‘ but seeing the videos and hearing the ideas of Old Steve makes the narrator wake up the next day full of knowledge, knowing everything, the way certain people with certain worldviews can speak with such assurance that hearing it is a warning call to not engage in a useless argument. The first verse is a funny and poignant satire of the gullibility of these ding dongs, but the second verse flips the script to Open Mike Eagle‘s own awakening. ‘And this whole shit is an experiment/when you only value inheritance/the only freedoms we project is disrespectful and arrogant/roll the bill of rights up in a pipe and use it on Nancy Kerrigan/’cause Hogan said “n****” and he was a real American/heard what the song say, interpreted it a different way,’ he raps, referencing Hulk Hogan‘s racism and what could be the darker and more insidious meaning behind the Hulkster’s entrance music laying bare America’s existence as a fundamentally racist nation focused on greed. Killer bars.
Other gods appear in the neighborhood as Superman and a talking blue baby who appears in Eagle’s room at midnight on “my coworker Clark Kent’s secret black box” and “a dream of the midnight baby (not a euphemism)” respectively. These tracks offer some levity and openness about Mike’s interpretations about himself. The former sees Mike as an employee at The Daily Planet tired of everyone there not seeing that Kent is Superman before the song flips the script to a self-deprecating narrative about himself using company time to write art-rap and being a bad parent, ‘you prolly parent like Goku/you fighting battles in a minivan/your own kids don’t like you.’ On the latter track, he describes himself as ‘nothing special‘ and ‘invisible‘ in the face of a cigar-smoking omnipotent blue baby telling him the secrets of the universe. For all of Open Mike Eagle‘s talent, creativity, and intelligence, he sees himself from the perspective of a regular guy trying to make a living off of his passion, a perspective often eclipsed by mainstream hip hop where money, cars, jewelry, and high fashion are seeded like an impossible dream to aspire to, leveraged by record execs who, like the rest of the citizens of Richistan, think of wealth as all that is needed to motivate the working class to grind harder. Never mind that the wealth in question is reserved and hoarded by a relatively minute amount of people and that regular working folks cannot grind their way into that stratosphere. That’s why these rich dorks live in Richistan. They are so out of touch with what regular people go through that they are essentially from an entirely different culture, but we let these gumballs make decisions that affect us.
Mike’s sense of humor is coupled with the ennui of modern existence. On “ok but I’m the phone screen” he talks about his phone, full of ideas for songs and projects, falling out of his pocket and getting ran over and destroyed. There is a lot to unpack as he processes his lament that does make a strong case for the technology angle, but songs like “contraband (the plug has bags of me)” or “me and Aquil stealing stuff from work” (featuring Mr. Aquil) are more reminiscent memories of inspiring teachers and shitbird bosses, respectively, neighborhood gods of different statures and influence. Sometimes, Mike himself is the god in question, though not in an egotistic sense, but more in how he perceives himself in memory, flawed but trying. ‘How do I get some more of me?‘ asks the outro of “almost broke my own nucleus accumbens” with STILL RIFT, and on “sorry I got huge (also not a euphemism)” he raps, ‘my therapist said take up space/my boy said take up space/my old blood said take up space,’ encouraging himself to not hold back his own feelings and worth.
The production on Neighborhood Gods Unlimited is well-selected and balanced, keeping tracks smooth and airy to match Open Mike Eagle‘s conversational flow while feeling cohesive. Child Actor takes the bulk of the credit, but August Fanon, K-Nite 13, lalive, Playa Haze, and Nolan The Ninja share production duties. Kenny Segal produces two tracks as well, including the closing track, “unlimited skull voices,” a song about hearing the voices of critics and other rappers contending with his own voice in his head. These voices lead to self-doubt as Mike positions himself into being an online persona outside of his music, and this creates an awkward moment. I am writing about Open Mike Eagle, confessing that his voice has entered my head, but if he reads this, then, like, my voice could be in his head. We have never met, but there is every possibility that each of our voices could be conversating with the real voices of the other one of us.
So, to my own voice that could end up in Open Mike Eagle’s head: tell him that he is loved and is worthy of praise. Tell him that criticism is just a few people babbling their ideas into the world and not reflective of every fan, that what he is doing on Neighborhood Gods Unlimited is important work for hip hop, keeping it grounded and whimsical in the face of a world full of anger, hate, greed, and general stupidity, that his voice serves as a vanguard against the fantasies that drive people to those negative things, because he provides intelligence and pragmatism and makes references to anime and comics that us other nerds appreciate. Tell him that his details of self-doubt and inquisitive nature connect with everyone who needs to hear it, and that even though his album came out the same day as the Clipse album, and even though Clipse is only a little older than him, his album is the kind of nourishment we need these days. Theirs is candy. Don’t sweat that shit. Finally, tell him ‘what’s up, dude?‘ because I would like to say ‘hi‘ to one of the realest rappers that exists right now. Thank you Open Mike Eagle.
