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7 min
Open Mike Eagle.
Photo by Emari Traffie
Private Playlist is a listening session with Southern California’s most notable musical figures in their private creative environments.
With more than a dozen solo and collaborative projects to his name, Leimert Park’s
Open Mike 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. He 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. More recently, he's made a shift toward examining trauma: his own and his community's. And on his brilliant new album, "Anime, Trauma, and Divorce," he probes the darkness of his past and searches for lights to guide him forward.