Showbiz!

As a still-young veteran rapper who’s spent the bulk of his career figuring himself out, MIKE seems to have hit his stride after passing the quarter-century mark. That’s not just in terms of establishing an on-record persona, though he’s developed into an introspective philosopher who’s already prioritized personal, familial, and social stability over the trappings of notoriety. And in the case of Showbiz! he makes getting his shit together sound like the kind of hustle that builds the most useful form of resilience. It’s not just an ego-trip grindset, but a need to get right with the world: “Can’t shield the worst, rewindin’ in your brain, rehearsin’ scripts / Ain’t heal or learn, bottled in the rage and the urges slip,” he reflects in “Clown of the Class (Work Harder),” a self-critique made even more explicit on cuts like “What U Bouta Do?/A Star Was Born” (“I’ve been trippin’ for some years, but it’s clearer now/I’m the victim of despair and the scary clouds”) and “The Weight (2k20)” (“My brothers hate to hear it, I be asking confusing shit/Amazed it took this year to feel the fact that I do exist”). All the better that he still sounds just as self-aware when careening from those admissions to his more confident verses, whether he’s playing wary defense (“Belly 1”), waxing triumphant (“#82”), or fighting his way from the former state to the latter (“Pieces of a Dream”; “Lucky”). That gives a certain power to his laidback delivery, the tone of which denotes not a complacent relaxation but a busy-minded contemplation, the spontaneous relentlessness of an internal monologue given the structure of a carefully delivered external one. And the blurry, impressionistic murmur in his voice is offset and punctuated by a sly assonance to his lyrics that hammers his shifting cadences home — an often-uprooted multi-city upbringing reflected in flows that have allegiance to an East Coast that amplifies Philly and Jersey and the Five Boroughs but still covers the whole South, all the way through Atlanta and towards the Mississippi River cities of Memphis and New Orleans. His flows on “Spun Out” and “When it Rains” and “Showbiz! (Intro)” are diabolical in this sense, shaping trap triplets into hypnotic vocal riffs that draw you into this meditative space of cross-generational reflection and in-the-moment rumination. His choice of beats relies heavily on his self-produced sensibilities as dj blackpower — it’s very much of the MF DOOM/Madlib/Dilla/knwxledge school of lo-fi time-dilating tape-hiss production, where weathered R&B and soul-jazz beats have the hauntological presence of personal memory triggers.