Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal crafted a hip hop breakup masterpiece

“Breakups are… tough.”

It’s the opening lines of an interlude towards the end of DOOMED! Called “It Happens in Every Universe.” It’s also basically the thesis of the entire record. It’s no grand revelation, but it’s a well-trodden subject that Open Mike Eagle manages to mine for artistic gold.

Eagle’s subject matter is usually personal, and his productions tinged with nostalgia. But DOOMED! is his most intimate album yet. A lot of that is due to the production from Kenny Segal. The two have traveled in the same orbit and worked together before, but this is the first full-length album release from the two.

These are some of Segal’s most commanding beats since Maps, his 2023 record with Billy Woods. There’s still warbly piano samples, strings, detuned sax melodies, and psychedelic synths, but everything feels more grounded and meaders less. Opener “Out to Lunch” even has fully on-the-grid hi-hats that tick robotically.

That gives way to “Streets of Rage: Public Arguments Edition,” which grooves along with a loose clap, jazzy piano, and confident bassline that recalls the work of Madlib. Over this lowkey funk, Eagle spins an oblique tale of fighting with a significant other. “She cut deep with short barbs, but twist me up with a lil whisper.”

It turns out that Segal and Eagle are a perfect pair. The rapper’s melodrama and eye for microscopic details play off the producer’s woozy and forlorn beats that are occasionally punctuated by a sense of foreboding. On the Billy Woods-featuring “She Swear I’m Colorblind,” Eagle intones on the chorus:

Some reason, shit got twisted,

Told me it was all my fault, she said

“Pay attention when I talk.”

The backing track is stabbed through with bursts of windchimes before ending on a high-pitched whine that feels like the onset of a panic attack.

“Unfinished Concrete Initials” contains some of Eagle’s most vulnerable bits, like, “In my daydreams your name’s curse words so I bleeped it,” and:

My memories like landmines and they heinous

Clicking high pootify collaborative playlists

Agonizing over deletions

Flushing evidence, pain is better in secret

There are still sparks of Open Mike Eagle’s sense of humor, though. “Schrödinger’s Green Room (There but Uninvited)” opens with him awkwardly proclaiming as if he’s trying to be heard over a bad phone connection, “All my thoughts is intrusive, there’s a DJ in my head, and he picks all his own music, it’s so confusing.” And, as you’d expect from the man who penned “Sweatpants Spiderman,” there are countless pop culture references to anime, Kitty Pride, Beanie Babies, Flipmode Squad, and even The Proclaimers.