81. Open Mike Eagle - “Brick Body Complex”
Brick Body Kids Still Daydream was one my favorite Hip-Hop albums of 2017. Its one of those works of art that defies all classification. Its classic in the sense that it addresses political and social issues with an excoriating swagger, and yet its fully modern, blending various genres with ease and unafraid of displaying a degree vulnerability and candor that any sort of OG would have shied away from. Its raw, following the psyche and the emotions of a modern black man wherever they may lead, from the joys and the successes of his artistry to the pervasive and suffocating grip of systematic racism.
Open Mike Eagle is an intellectual. He’s the introspective thinker, the quiet kid, always observing and absorbing, at risk of drifting into obscurity until he suddenly opens his mouth and reveals some unthought of wisdom or piercing play of words. He’s an artist, and like all true artists (not some wannabe influencer, capitalistic dog, social media artist) he seeks to defy limitation. He doesn’t want to be labeled and sequestered into some predictable and demeaning or dismissive box.
All he wants is to be himself. It’s a notion that’s relatable enough to any artist, but takes on even added significance to all POC trying to navigate the world of art (and just the world of capitalism in general). The powers that be like to commodify all talent, to swallow it up and market it to the masses, contorting it to their wishes and diverting it from where it might have otherwise gone on its own. They see the artist as nothing but a means to an end. America is the apotheosis of this, and African Americans drive America’s artistic development. Its yet another form of control, slavery by a different name, a systematic system of exploitation exercised under the guise of opportunity and fame.
Open Mike sees all of this. He sees how African Americans are abused, lured from poverty to fame with the promise of riches, but losing their freedom every step of the way. It’s new age minstrelsy, an entire class of individuals being forced to play a role, to be limited to a title and a stereotype, stripped of any individuality, always prefaced by a race, a skin tone, or a demographic, unnaturally separated from themselves, kept at distance from the most basic of all human rights – the right to autonomy of the self.
