Open Mike Eagle & Paul White
Hella Personal Film Festival
If Kanye has disappointed you lately (don't worry, it's happened to everyone), and you pine for the good-old days of his college trilogy (College Dropout, Late Registration, and Graduation), arguably his best work, then the collaboration of LA-via-Chicago-based rapper Open Mike Eagle and British producer Paul White will blow your mind.
Hella Personal Film Festival is the best possible combination of 70s-era samples and rhymes that bring TV On The Radio's Tunde Adebimpe to the front of your mind, and will keep you coming back for more rewarding listens. That's not to say Mike Eagle doesn't have his own voice; in Film Festival, his storytelling talent is on full display. Never repetitive, he pays those listeners willing to dive in and make the full commitment to album-long listening back.
Teaming up with Paul White is an inspired choice, and we are very much the better for it. The platforms he creates for Eagle to deliver upon are strong, challenging, and engrossing. Hella Personal Film Festival is an album that demands multiple listens; it is sprawling and difficult to unpack. But your recompense for such fastidious concentration is the joy of hearing musical and lyrical proficiency so excellent, you could swear you were part of its creation.
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