The hard truth is, no matter how many albums we review each year, there are always countless releases that end up overlooked. That’s why, from now until the end of December, we’re bringing back our No Album Left Behind series and singing the praises of our favorite underrated records of 2025.
At the end of “Da Roc,” a highlight from MIKE’s seventh studio album, Showbiz!, a fan effusively attests to the rapper’s greatness. “I’ll forever love MIKE,” they say. “Full glaze, I don’t care.” That clip is sampled from a reaction video to “Belly 1,” a different track from Showbiz!, but its inclusion on “Da Roc” feels pointed. “I wouldn’t play in that road, but nah, I ain’t ridin’ with you / Sometimes I feel like I’m Hov, that don’t mean I’m rockin’ with you,” MIKE raps over a swooning beat, his voice at once relaxed and controlled. As a bastion of New York’s underground rap scene, he curates his music and his community with careful precision. A fan vocalizing their fealty is a part of that community, too. It got them on the album, after all.
For MIKE, music and community are intersecting lines on the same chart; they’re two worthy pursuits that produce a symbiotic effect for their counterpart. On top of managing the Young World festival and his 10k record label, he is a producer for various artists, releases music under his dj blackpower moniker, and still makes time for his work as MIKE. “How I be knowing that people don’t really care about community is, if everybody you’re talking about is a musician, you don’t know the community,” he told Pitchfork earlier this year. “Where’s the homies that are making the flyers? Where’s the homies that are making the merch and doing the videos? Where’s the homies that don’t do shit? They just pull up to the show!” In other words, where are all the glazers? They’re a part of it, too. More than any other MIKE album, Showbiz! embodies the communal spirit that its creator so frequently espouses.
There have been prior collaborative records, such as the excellent Pinball series with Tony Seltzer and Faith Is a Rock with Wiki and The Alchemist. There’s also the occasional feature on his proper records, like the ones 454 and duendita fulfill here, but MIKE has mostly handled everything related to his own music himself. For the most part, that’s the case on Showbiz!. His insular, funhouse-mirror instrumentals permeate the record like viscous syrup spreading over a tall stack of pancakes. But here, he sometimes cedes production duties to likeminded artists such as Laron (“Showbiz! (Intro)”), Salami Rose Joe Louis (“Zombie pt. 2”), and Surf Gang’s Harrison (“Belly 1”). Each understands the gravitational pull of MIKE’s work, a tapestry of woozy samples, shimmering keyboards, and shapeshifting drums. Every element orbits his unmistakable voice, built on a compelling hybrid of somnambulant delivery and dextrous wordplay.
In the aforementioned Pitchfork interview, MIKE spoke of how he builds worlds through his music. He expounded on music’s latent power to transport you to somewhere previously inaccessible. That’s one of the greatest achievements of Showbiz!, something Nicole Kidman would certainly love: how it manages to take you places you’ve never been before. Simultaneously transcendental and lived-in, Showbiz! accomplishes the stunning feat of marrying galactic ambition and intimate camaraderie; each song is like a secret you’ve been entrusted to share with only a select few. It’s one way to foster a tight-knit community.
As Showbiz! suggests, that’s what MIKE is ultimately doing this for. On “Artist of the Century,” he ends the chorus with one of the album’s most indelible lines: “I been puttin’ up with strife since a youngin / The prize isn’t much, but the price is abundant.” Even if underground hip-hop is far from the most lucrative career path, making art and finding your faction can yield different kinds of riches, ones that value the soul over the bank account. MIKE understands that intuitively, and it’s clear from his craft alone. Over the past decade or so, he’s proven himself as one of the consistently best rappers and producers doing it right now. He’s prolific, but his quality control never falters. I say all this, but I don’t even care if I’m glazing.
Grant Sharples is a writer, journalist and critic. His work has also appeared in Interview, Uproxx, Pitchfork, Stereogum, The Ringer, Los Angeles Review of Books, and other publications. He lives in Kansas City.
