Hi, everyone. Hathony Hatano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Open Mike Eagle album, Neighborhood Gods Unlimited.

Here we have a new LP from veteran underground rapper, singer, songwriter, comedy mind, streamer, commentator, a creator of many stripes, Mr. Open Mike Eagle. We are now a few projects deep into what I guess you could say is the latest era of his lengthy career. Anybody who is trying to get into this man's music should most definitely go back to classics like Dark Comedy as well as Brick Body Kids. Great albums that were a part of a really impressive run for him creatively, but 2020's Anime Trauma and Divorce was a bit of a turning point for Mike, not only in terms of laying out some pretty devastating changes his life was going through at the time, but this album also marked a new independent pathway for him, releasing music through his Auto Reverse label, which he has been rocking with to this day.

Then in 2022, he hit us with Component System with the Auto Reverse, which comparatively was a much more raw and lively project. A little messy, a little all over the place, certainly not his most high fidelity record so far.

But these are characteristics of the record that were no doubt intentional, especially with this figure on the front cover that has this tape deck amp combo unit on his head, which I think is the perfect way to signal to your fans that they were about to embark on this crazy mix tape-esque experience. Also on this LP, while the general mood was more light-hearted, Mike was digging deeper into this more diaristic, heady brand of song writing, sometimes going through the minutiae of his creative evolution and artistic process, like on "I Retired, Then I Changed My Mind". And there were deeper moments which attributed huge influences on his creativity, like MF On the track "For Doom". There were also some cuts on this thing that saw Mike getting a bit meta in a kooky way, such as on the "Credits Interlude", as well as with the CD only bonus track.

And this project was followed by the much shorter Another Triumph of Ghetto Engineering, which, given the rapping, the writing, the production on that, and the title of it, tying into a reference to the previous album, it felt like a decent series of afterthoughts for Auto Reverse.

And while Neighborhood Gods does feel like a different project with a different direction, Open Mike Eagle is still seemingly working through this chapter of his career with this tape deck head, releasing his music through Auto Reverse again and assembling projects here that feel just a bit more homespun and casual. Mike is also taking on more production duties in the credits of this album as well, though that doesn't seem to have altered the production that you would normally hear on an Open Mike Eagle album, be it these somewhat nerdy, left-field, polite, sometimes jazzy and sample-heavy instrumentals.

So there definitely are elements of consistency this record shares with Open Mike Eagle's most recent work. I would say there's actually even a greater meta-awareness, creatively, going on here. In the opening few seconds of the album where you hear this promotional drop of "Dark Comedy Television," which apparently is supposed to be in reference to a concept Mike has had in his mind for a while now about a cable network can only afford to be on one hour per week. So it has to get all of its shows out in that time frame.

So in many ways, the tracks on this album are not merely just songs, but programs, shorts, scenes, motifs. 38 minutes of cohesive programming, I guess. And the slate of shows on Dark Comedy Television through this project are, at least during this season, moody, contemplative, with the occasional joke and a touch of self-effacing humor for a good measure.

With the opening track, which is the theme of the whole record, "Woke Up Knowing Everything", Mike is doing this whole routine around self-awareness and self-understanding when it comes to your life path and your traumas and your behaviors. It's a track that's searching for knowledge, searching for understanding, very much an It All Makes Sense moment, especially with bars like "People looking for a larger plot / Awaiting fades in the barber shop / Because if your voice ain't as loud as his / Maybe he knows where the power is / Maybe he knows why the rent is high / It's all because the moon is in Gemini / And Mercury's in the Gatorade / I'm just trying to get a taper fade."

Which is witty, observational, funny, and I love how it all circles back to getting a haircut. But sonically and vocally, this is also a very gentle start to an Open Mike Eagle album. His half-sung, half-rapped verses ride out over these heavenly sample chops. It's just a very sweet and serene start to the whole thing.

The following track, "Me and Aquil Stealing Stuff from Work", while it is a bit punchier, more energetic, it's still a pretty chill cut overall. Yeah, on the surface, it is very much about stealing from a shoe store that you're working at. But digging deeper, this song is also very much about low-wage apathy, leading a life and an existence that is mundane and honestly just not very gratifying. And while the energy of this track, again, is still subtle, the jokes very much hit.

The topic of "Contraband (The Plug Has Bags of Me)", switches over into the spiritual with lots of jazz samples over which Open Mike waxes poetic about places his intelligence has taken him over the years, especially in his youth. Eventually, fast forwarding deeper into the song and likening himself to a drug, a product that is to be sold and marketed, most likely drawing a connection that his perceptiveness of words that he showcased very early on in life. It helps him in his creative career now with hip hop.

Following this, we have some chill jazz rap vibes and great vocal chemistry between Mike and STILL RIFT on "Almost Broke My Nucleus Accumbens", which I am down for any song that will just randomly drop a Kurt Vonnegut reference.

But a track that hit even harder for me in this tracklist was "Ok But I'm the Phone Screen", which is just this riveting retelling of Mike having his phone run over, destroyed, and just mourning all of the reflections of his life that were held in that phone, lost forever, not backed up on the cloud. We're talking not just personal stuff, but rhymes and demo ideas and so on and so forth. It's creative, the comparisons he draws to losing all of this material like a Dead Sea scrolls. And what he says is a time where apparently RZA had his basement flooded and lost a bunch of disks. But then he goes on to say, Yeah, it's like that, but less devastating.

I mean, nobody is writing like this. It's just funny how Open Mike Eagle can really just drill down into a topic and be so serious and yet unserious at the same time.

"Michigan J. Wonder" is another very smart cut where Mike describes much of what he spends his solitude doing, the way he occupies those very lonely moments being creative. Meanwhile, "Relentless Hands and Feet" feels like an analysis of just his current day state as an artist. The way the chorus works feels almost like a description of how one might feel needing to have to consider things like replayability during the algorithm age, during the streaming age. Deeper into the track, Mike describes things like rapper apathy and self-doubts getting in his way and needing to fight past all of that. Again, despite this track sounding as low-key as many others on the record, it's still pretty moving and motivational.

"My Coworker Clark Kent's Secret Black Box" is even more creative creative and conceptual, though. I would say this track also falls in line much more with the television show concept that he's got going on here slightly, as he describes having to work with Clark Kent or this Clark Kent type character. Mike is exploring a bit of jealousy on this one, being in close quarters with somebody who is just offputting to you and you don't trust and there's just something you can't quite put your finger on that is weird about him. You just see something about him that other people don't, despite the fact that if anybody's looking at this guy on the surface level, he's getting his work done and he's really exemplary and doing what he has to do.

Look, this is one of among many very solid cuts on this record. I did pick out a fair amount of songs on here that I think are impressive by Mike's usual standards, from the opener to the closer.

But I still do think this project overall is lacking a little bit in terms of consistency and follow-through. There are some songs that, personally, I find build a little bit of a lull into the album, considering just how low key and understated the entire project sounds. Some of the worst offenders being "A Dream of the Midnight Baby", as well as "Sorry I Got Huge". I do understand how that song, especially vocally, sounding as quiet as it does, plays into the concept of the track, the message Mike is trying to communicate there. But the end result, approaching the performance that way, just creates an unlistenable song that is difficult to engage with. It's like he performance-art'd the track into something less interesting than it could have been.

Some tracks like "Contraband" that I mentioned earlier, while I do love the meaning of this track and what it's trying to get across, the fizzled-out ending and very one-note production and vocal performance leaves the song just sounding less interesting than it actually is. While I do appreciate on some level the more DIY edge Mike is trying to give some of his more recent projects, sometimes it does lead to songs that just come across a little too half baked or even demo quality.

So yeah, it's not that this album isn't good. It most certainly is. I just think there are aspects of it that could have been built out, improved, advanced in some way. But regardless, Open Mike Eagle still continues to be one of the most unique rappers out there today, unparalleled as a wordsmith, as a humorist, too, which is why I'm feeling a light to decent 7 on this record.

Anthony Fantano, Open Mike Eagle, Forever.