{"id":9429,"date":"2014-09-04T13:08:23","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T13:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stylusmagazine.ca\/?p=9429"},"modified":"2014-09-04T13:08:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T13:08:23","slug":"nonstophiphop-open-mike-eagle-and-the-la-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/2014\/09\/04\/nonstophiphop-open-mike-eagle-and-the-la-sound\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonstophiphop :: Open Mike Eagle and the LA sound"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MIKE_EAGLE_ANDY_J_SCOTT-6043\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Harrison Samphir<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2008, Ava DuVernay\u2019s documentary film This Is the Life <\/i>chronicled the rise of LA\u2019s alternative hip hop community from the vantage point of the Good Life Health Food Centre\u2019s weekly open-mic night. Founded in 1989, the event attracted emcees, poets and heads alike. It was a place to freestyle (cuss-free), practise the art of rap and celebrate hip hop culture with the serious disposition of an aspiring artist. Jurassic 5, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Skee-Lo and the Pharcyde were all schooled at Good Life.<\/p>\n

Around that time, West Coast hip hop was also dominated by a singular aesthetic: gangsta rap. For a period, artists like Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and Cypress Hill practically typecast the city. It was G-Funk or bust. Yet the characterization faded with the downturn of mainstream West Coast rap in the late-1990s and early-2000s. The emergence of hyphy club music \u2013 originating in the Bay Area \u2013 and other new forms of electronic-influenced hip hop drove artists like E-40, Lil B and Too Short to unprecedented levels of recognition.<\/p>\n

Interviewed in the film, rapper P.E.A.C.E. of the Freestyle Fellowship reflected on this particular historical moment. \u201cAt that time all we had was N.W.A, and everybody thought everything coming out of L.A. [was] gangsta rap… We don\u2019t got to do that, you know? Let them do that, and let us do something else.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took many years for LA to outgrow the \u201chood culture\u201d stereotypes passed on by artists like Dr. Dre and MC Eiht, but its maturation has resulted in a homegrown hip hop renaissance. Over the last decade, the Big Orange has produced some of the most successful independent rap artists in the United States: Busdriver, Nocando, Subtitle and Melo, to name only a few. Each have played a role in enlivening the left-field rap movement, an earlier stage of which was captured in DuVernay\u2019s film.<\/p>\n

Today, the Good Life Health Food Centre has morphed into Project Blowed (established 1994), an expanded workshop and open-mic platform celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year. Among its disciples are familiar names \u2013 Pigeon John, the Nonce, Self Jupiter, Adlib \u2013 and a host of others with talent, style and acclaimed records to their credit.<\/p>\n

One of these is 33-year-old Michael Eagle II, a Chicago native turned Angeleno who performs under the moniker Open Mike Eagle. Once a student of Project Blowed, Mike infiltrated LA\u2019s alternative hip hop scene in the mid-2000s. He launched albums with local groups Swim Team and Thirsty Fish before the release of his solo debut Unapologetic Art Rap <\/i>brought listeners closer to his idiosyncratic, humorous yet tactful delivery, and a brand-new sub genre.<\/p>\n

Mike\u2019s \u201cart rap\u201d fuses thoughtful, reflexive meditations on topics from the creative process to pop culture with a sharp wit and ear for poetry, rhythm and harmony. It\u2019s partly a response to the commercial rap pervading mainstream radio waves, but also an opportunity to carve out a lasting place among the local hip hop artists with whom he so often collaborates.<\/p>\n

Speaking with Stylus <\/i>on the phone from Los Angeles, Mike reflected on the experience of building an alternative hip hop community and his latest (and greatest) record, Dark Comedy<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cLA is a very disparate place,\u201d he begins. \u201cEverything is very spread out, so the way things work organically in the city is that there are all sorts of pocket movements going on. Project Blowed was a very important place because it created a space for many people to come together and share styles, share influences, share fans.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn an even more basic level than that, it was always good to just have a place to go and rap\u2026 No matter how big your career had become \u2013 whether you were signed to a major or just got off work \u2013 the place was there for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike is an occasional mentor to some young people who come through Project Blowed, but the workshop has long connected him with LA\u2019s diverse hip hop minds. He\u2019s appeared on Busdriver and Nocando records, Myka 9\u2019s 2012 album Sovereign Soul<\/i>, and worked with dozens of California producers from Exile to Ras G. On Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes<\/i>, his second solo effort, he collaborated with more than ten trackmasters over 14 songs. His latest work, Dark Comedy<\/i>, features a remarkable 11 producers. It\u2019s a far-reaching collaborative process Mike orchestrates his own way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we talk about the \u2018core elements of hip hop\u2019 or \u2018hip hop song structures\u2019 or whatever makes a hip hop song a hip hop song,\u201d he says, \u201cI look at that differently than other people. I don\u2019t I think I look to hip hop and expect it to do the things other people expect it to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA rap beat to me is just whatever somebody wants to rap over. I\u2019m not very concerned with what I\u2019m starting to understand is the traditional idea of a banger or a big hip hop beat. I write raps to whatever I want to rap over and let the music inform what I write about.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Ava DuVernay ever made a sequel to This Is the Life<\/i>, continuing the narrative of L.A.\u2019s alternative hip hop community into the present, it would have to include Open Mike Eagle. <\/i>From Project Blowed to indie success, he\u2019s become an essential artist in West Coast hip hop. Dark Comedy <\/i>is just further proof rap music needn’t conform to a singular aesthetic; art, after all, shouldn\u2019t simply represent outward appearances, but their inward significance.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t sleep!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Harrison Samphir In 2008, Ava DuVernay\u2019s documentary film This Is the Life chronicled the rise of LA\u2019s alternative hip hop community from the vantage point of the Good Life Health Food Centre\u2019s weekly open-mic night. Founded in 1989, the event attracted emcees, poets and heads alike. It was a place to freestyle (cuss-free), practise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[535,675],"class_list":["post-9429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-columns","tag-la","tag-nonstophiphop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}