Open Mike Eagle announces Whelan's headline show

Hip-hop legend Open Mike Eagle (real name Michael W. Eagle II) has announced a Dublin show at Whelan's on April 10th, 2022 - presented by Singular Artists.

Open Mike Eagle spent the 2010s finding comedy in rap music and American nightmares. On albums like Brick Body Kids Still Daydream and Dark Comedy, he delivered hilarious socio-political insights via half-sung verses laid atop progressive production.

Originally from Chicago; the 41-year-old rapper is now based in Los Angeles, where he is a member of the hip hop collective Project Blowed. He has also been a member of Thirsty Fish, Swim Team, and Cavanaugh.

Between studio sessions, Eagle co-founded The New Negroes, a standup-meets-music variety show that explores perceptions of blackness. He and co-founder Baron Vaughn brought the show to Upright Citizens Brigade, Comedy Central, and venues around the US. Since founding his record label Auto Reverse Records, Eagle has scaled back the jokes. He’s finally unpacking his traumas and acknowledging their impact.

With over a dozen solo and collaborative projects to his name, Eagle has spent his career redefining and expanding the parameters of “art rap,” the term he coined as a shorthand for leftfield and avant-garde rap music. On Dark Comedy, he chronicled everything from smartphone addiction to the realities of being an indie artist in the streaming era with self-deprecation and side-splitting absurdity.

2017’s Brick Body Kids Still Daydream (Mello Music Group) marked Eagle’s shift toward examining trauma. Here he waded through the rubble of Chicago’s demolished Robert Taylor Homes, where several family members once lived. Part documentary and part tribute, BBKSD blended powerful fantasy and grim reality. It illustrated the strength and vulnerability of a community afflicted by institutional racism and the enduring pains of life in the projects. There were few jokes but decades of survival.

In 2018, he released an EP, What Happens When I Try to Relax and appeared in three episodes of Netflix's 2020 show History of Swear Words. Anime, Trauma, and Divorce is Eagle’s first full-length album on Auto Reverse and the most personal project of his career. On the verge of middle age, reeling from the collapse of his marriage, he probes the darkness of his past and searches for lights to guide him forward.

Executive produced by Ireland's renowned rock producer Jacknife Lee (U2, R.E.M.), the album’s few features include Auto Reverse artist Video Dave and Eagle’s son. Anime, Trauma, and Divorce finds Eagle virtually alone, doing his best to reject the humour that will not cure his ills. All is not well, but he’s never been better.

Listen to his latest single 'Burner Account' below and nab your tickets for his Whelan's show this Thursday, December 16th at 9am on singularartists.ie.