Open Mike Eagle

Open Mike Eagle (Michael W. Eagle II) is a rapper, producer and comedian born on November 14, 1980 in Chicago, Illinois, and now based in Los Angeles.^[1]

He grew up in Chicago, including time in the Robert Taylor Homes, and lived with his grandparents until he was thirteen. He studied psychology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and completed a year of graduate school.^[1]

After moving to Los Angeles he worked for AmeriCorps and at a non-profit halfway house while rapping as a hobby, and there he found the Project Blowed collective, which he still belongs to. He formed the trio Thirsty Fish and co-founded the battle crew Swim Team.^[1]

His solo albums include Unapologetic Art Rap (2010), Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes (2011), 4nml Hsptl (2012), Dark Comedy (2014) and the Robert Taylor Homes concept album Brick Body Kids Still Daydream (2017). In 2016 he made Hella Personal Film Festival with British producer Paul White.^[1]

Eagle has said he does not want his music treated as comedy, and that he uses humor to catch listeners off guard rather than to be jokey.^[2] Beyond music he hosts the podcast Secret Skin and co-hosted the Comedy Central series The New Negroes.^[1]

Eagle was a schoolteacher before music became his full-time work.^[4] His 2017 album Brick Body Kids Still Daydream grew from documentaries he watched about the demolition of the Robert Taylor Homes, where his aunt and cousins lived. He then traveled back to Chicago alone to photograph the site, and he describes the record as an audio version of a mural.^[3] The video game Dark Souls shaped his approach, since its ruins-and-lore storytelling inspired him to treat the Homes as a place with its own oral history.^[3] Around the release he toured with Sammus, milo and billy woods.^[4]