What happens when Open Mike Eagle tries to take it easy? A new record, a new TV show and an international tour. So much for downtime.
Eagle is all over the map these days, but he makes it look easy. In October, the Los Angeles-residing rapper and comedian released What Happens When I Try to Relax, the latest record in his decade-plus career as an independent artist and one of his most compelling yet. His newest comedic venture, a socially conscious stand-up and music series called The New Negroes, is set to premiere April 19 on Comedy Central and BET. The next leg of his tour will bring him to Nashville on Tuesday, and in a few weeks he’ll head to the U.K. The Scene caught up with Eagle on the phone just days after he returned to L.A. from SXSW. He described his shows at SXSW as his best since he started performing at the fest in the early Aughts.
“I have a long history with SXSW,” says Eagle. “To come from very DIY, touch-and-go rap shows to doing some really cool comedy shows and doing one of the music gigs I’ve been most excited to do — it was great.”
That gig was an opening slot for revered hip-hop trio De La Soul, whom the 38-year-old Eagle holds in his “pantheon of rap heroes” alongside influences like A Tribe Called Quest, MF Doom, Common and Busta Rhymes. Eagle grew up on Chicago’s South Side in the infamous Roger Taylor Homes housing projects, an experience that inspired his critically acclaimed 2017 concept album Brick Body Kids Still Daydream. Although Eagle left Chicago at 18, it’s where he first discovered his talent for rap. In the ’90s, he recalls, group cyphers and freestyles reached epic proportions, and gave Eagle an informal space to hone his skills.
“I kicked my first rhyme in 1996 in the back of a KFC on the South Side of Chicago,” Eagle says. “We would go to public spaces like Navy Pier and Harold Washington Library and have these gigantic cyphers with, like, 20 or 30 dudes all rhyming in a circle, and a crowd of 100 people around that circle, just listening.”
For college, Eagle moved downstate to attend Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, where he graduated with a degree in psychology. During his tenure as a resident assistant in a dorm at SIU, one of his residents was Hannibal Buress. The two became friends and remain musical and comedic collaborators. Motivated by his love for the lauded L.A. hip-hop collective Project Blowed, Eagle moved to the West Coast after graduation and embedded himself in the group’s scene. “They couldn’t make me leave,” he recalls.
Inspired early on by music-based comedy sketch shows like MTV’s The Lyricist Lounge Show and the documentary film Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, Eagle built a unique career — one in which he flows seamlessly between the comedy and hip-hop realms. Mining his expertise as a comic, he incorporates elements from stand-up sets into his rap performances.
“It’s given me insight into what people respond to,” he says. “[And] all the different ways a person onstage can engage the audience that you wouldn’t typically think of in the hip-hop space.”
A constant stream of gigs and invigorating creative opportunities makes it hard for Eagle to ever sit still. He admits that while he was making What Happens When I Try to Relax, he probably should have been doing nothing. On “Microfiche,” one of the record’s standout tracks, Eagle sings: “Just shut your eyes / It can all go away.” The track is his way of convincing himself he is capable of tuning out the madness of modern life and the artistic grind.
“That song sets an intention,” he says. “Even if I don’t fully believe it myself.”
Eagle is excited to get back on the road, and to return to Nashville, a city he describes as “ripe for adventure.” Joining him will be underground rapper Sammus and Video Dave, a visual artist who syncs video projections to Eagle’s songs. Eagle says the audience can expect a multisensory experience — “but no smells, though.”
