Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal Release Conceptual New Album
Rapper, screenwriter and comedian Open Mike Eagle and producer Kenny Segal just released their heady new collaborative album DOOMED!
To coincide with the album’s release, the two also shared the video for the record’s opening track, “Out to Lunch.” Following a string of tour dates in support of clipping., Open Mike Eagle will stay on the road this fall joining Armand Hammer on select dates of their tour that follows their recent NPR Tiny Desk Concert premiere.
Five years in the making, DOOMED! features 15 new tunes.
“It is every troublesome misunderstanding of a half-decade relationship distorted and stretched into an absurdist black comedy mini-series on wax,” reads the press release. “It is the sound of every fight playing simultaneously. It is several consecutive voice notes you did not listen to, and instead read the transcription. It is the world’s first half-whimsical break-up album.”
Eagle and Segal both arrived in LA as young, aspiring artists drawn to the scene around groundbreaking rap crew Project Blowed. They have been friends and occasional collaborators, for nearly 20 years. Despite that history, DOOMED! marks the first time the two have built a full body of work together.
“In recent years, Kenny made it very clear that he wasn’t trying to keep having one or two beats on my projects; he wanted to build something,” Open Mike Eagle explains in the press release. “I was able to convince him to let me use a couple beats for Neighborhood Gods Unlimited with the caveat that we would focus on our thing next. Then my relationship fell apart right when we started working, and it was like, ‘Perfect, I have a lot to say about this.’”
The album centers on “a man who is not all there because his head is still in yesterday.”
“Each vision is a crashed airplane halfway on the border of dream and nightmare, bitter and sweet, sadness and freedom,” Eagle says. “Every one of Kenny’s beats is a chunk of ore from a different comet. I used each one as a canvas to paint my impression of a dead world.”
Photo credit: Alex Steed
Upcoming 2026 Shows (Open Mike Eagle):
10/3 – Encino, CA @ Citystock
10/6 – Montreal, QC @ Theatre Fairmount *
10/7 – Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace *
10/9 – Cleveland, OH @ Beachland Tavern
10/10 – Chicago, IL @ Thalia Hall *
10/12 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle Backroom ^
10/13 – Washington, DC @ Songbyrd ^
10/14 – Baltimore, MD @ 8 x 10 ^
10/16 – Brooklyn, NY @ Sultan Room ^
11/3 – Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole *^
11/4 – Phoenix, AZ @ Crescent Ballroom *^
11/5 – Santa Ana, NM @ Constellation Room *^
11/6 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room *^
* with Armand Hammer
^ with Kenny Segal
Jeff
