Tough as they may be, breakups make for good material. Doomed! is Open Mike Eagle’s entry into that wide canon – sitting alongside Tyler, the Creator’s Igor and Ye’s 808s & Heartbreak in the alt-rap subcategory – and finds the LA-via-Chicago rapper every bit as wide-eyed, caustic and, at-times, crushing as those who’ve Kübler-Rossed their way out of a relationship before him. Out of lemons, lemonade, and all that. In fact, without the disintegration of his five-year relationship, he and Kenny Segal – the feted Low End Theory-reared producer who helms the entire project – might have been resigned to merely cropping up as occasional features on each other’s records forever. The breakup gave sessions a focal point, and half a decade’s grievances to mull. Or, as Eagle puts it languidly over lounge glockenspiel on Streets of Rage: Public Arguments Edition: “These is true stories told loosely.” Emotions run high, and stretch scenarios to absurd shapes: the tragicomic image of failing to scribe initials into wet concrete, or the relationship’s “Covid growth spurt”. It’s the sound of Open Mike Eagle replaying every row and coming up with the ideal comeback just a few months too late. It’s also funny, if excruciatingly so: “I’d rather tongue kiss a bug zapper,” he offers on Don’t Go Look. Segal’s beats keep things interesting – a glistening cascade of keys on She Swear I’m Colorblind, the slow-motion corrode of Watching a Movie Called Freedom by Myself – but Eagle’s verses, still raw, never quite touch catharsis.