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Mike: Showbiz! review – a master rap craftsman building his own world
These fleeting fragments of the rapper-producer’s itinerant life, delivered in a lackadaisical yet focused style, prove he deserves all the acclaim he gets
After a life spent bouncing between the UK and US – and, now, endlessly touring – New York rapper Mike’s delivery has the hazy fug of waking up from a jetlag nap. Over mostly self-produced beats, his lyrics, often written freely in streams of consciousness, sit in cosy corners of cut-and-stitched samples, comparable with the drifting verses of his friend and mentor Earl Sweatshirt or the smoother edges of Buffalo’s Westside Gunn. But they are packed with rich detail: an anxious sax loop on The Weight (2k20) as Mike spirals over the death of his mother; on Pieces of a Dream, meandering keys pan drunkenly from left to right as he repeats: “I ain’t sober yet.” His lackadaisical style belies this close focus.
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