Open Mike Eagle & Kenny Segal — DOOMED!

Fifteen tracks in, Open Mike Eagle has broken up with his therapist, his barber and his primary care physician. Only one of those was a romance. DOOMED! landed August 14 on Backwoodz Studioz, the first full-length from two men who have been friends in Los Angeles for almost twenty years and found each other in the orbit of Project Blowed. Segal produces all of it and refuses the beat switch: dusty loops, muted jazz, worn samples kept at a simmer so the comic-book framing has somewhere to land. Seven reviews in, the critical average sits at 81, which is the room agreeing with something it can plainly hear. The track to sit with is "Unfinished Concrete Initials," where the stick breaks before the names are finished and the concrete sets anyway.