Mike Eagle doesn’t rap; he talks to you in rhythmic form, calmly unpacking his narrative as the world around him spirals out of control. Emcees like Eagle, Action Bronson, Aesop Rock, and Homeboy Sandman have this uncanny way of drawing you into what they say, despite unusual references that don’t always connect. Theirs is a conversational cadence full of random observations; and with Eagle, he can discuss wrestler Rick Martel’s cologne and the struggles of being a black man with the same verve, even if those topics are completely dissimilar. Eagle comes off like the everyman with whom you can talk about anything, an alternative to trap-rap, although he’s dexterous enough to drift in all sorts of directions.
Take last year’s “Raps for When It’s Just You and the Abyss” as an example: Beneath a slow churning instrumental, you can see Eagle methodically pacing back and forth, pulling disparate factoids from his brain: “Was pretty geeked about my L.A. Weekly feature/ I showed it to my dad, my barber and my piano teacher.” On “A History of Modern Dance,” the Jeremiah Jae-produced standout of Eagle’s Dark Comedy LP, he connects equally scattered thoughts using melodic flows: “People walk into circles … every audience listens … they taking turns judging … everybody got issues.” It doesn’t matter how Eagle conveys his messages, the songs end up feeling direct and honest, as if he’s looking you squarely in the face to make sure you get the point.
There’s no shortage of peculiar insight on Hella Personal Film Festival, Eagle’s collaborative album with British producer Paul White. On “Drunk Dreaming,” he envisions President Obama in a small drone and sees Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on a moving bus. He flubs rhymes on “I Went Outside Today” and trails off slightly on “Dive Bar Support Group.” The mistakes probably wouldn’t work for most rappers, but in Eagle’s case, it makes him even more relatable. For roughly 46 minutes, he observes life with the same gusto he always has, except these songs play like short movies set in a different era. The track titles are quirky—“Dang is Invincible,” “A Short About a Guy That Dies Every Night,” “Admitting the Endorphin Addiction”—and the content is largely esoteric, yet Eagle tempers it just enough for broader consumption.
On “Check to Check,” for instance, he riffs on society’s obsession with smartphones, the fact that we can’t function without looking at our devices every few minutes. White creates a frenetic cosmic funk beat that exemplifies life’s rapid pace, and Eagle darts through it with a nervous energy that complements the track: “Battery getting low, but it’s not quite out yet/ So check, I’m in ya house now checkin’ for outlets/ I need to use maps ‘cause I don’t know the route yet/ I need to see an email, I don’t know when the soundcheck.” The song, which sits near the album’s beginning, is the best example of Eagle and White’s synergy. The beat shifts with each verse, growing more infectious as the rapper grows more restless.
Festival feels steeped in ’70s soul—from the guitar lick on “Admitting the Endorphin Addiction” to the Curtis Mayfield-style harp on “I Went Outside Today.” White’s music fades further back as the album plays; songs like “Protectors of the Heat” and “Insecurity Part II” are made up of simple mouth clicks, light drums, and scant keys. Overall, the album begins quickly before it slows to a moderate pace, on which Eagle fills the second half with self-assessing thoughts on race (“Smiling”) and societal despair (“Reprieve”).
It makes sense that Eagle and White would come together for a project like this. Separately, they hit similar creative marks and speak to the same alt-rap demographic, despite taking divergent paths to get there. Festival is refreshingly cohesive, exploring varied themes without drifting off-course. Then again, that’s not saying much for Eagle and White, who’ve long established their own unique lanes. These songs foreshadow a much larger story, one that only these two can tell.
