Showbiz!: MIKE

Showbiz!, the ninth studio album by enigmatic lo-fi rapper MIKE, is not only another notch in his impeccable discography but also a holistic reminder of what he has done best throughout his career.

Across the project’s spanning, 24-track scope, MIKE chases a variety of wild and eclectic samples through the variety of alleys and avenues they leave in their wake. Following such timeless projects as May God Bless Your Hustle and Burning Desire, MIKE, frankly, did not have much left to prove. Yet, entirely self-produced under the alias DJ Blackpower, Showbiz! is a sort of heat check for MIKE, a test of the impressive capabilities of his tumbling flow.

Yet, even over samples like the looped wind instruments on “Artist of the Century”, his vocal competence never seems strained, let alone pushed to its limits. No matter what diverse sample MIKE has pulled for his instrumentals, his impressive variance in cadence and energy allows him to tailor himself to the beat while maintaining his trademark drawl.

While the project does not dive too deeply into its ostensible themes, it does make use of various vocal samples from films, beginning “Bear Trap”, the first song on the album, with an example of this employment.

In fact, through his arrangement of the first few tracks, he has already shown off a large portion of his arsenal by the time the project reaches “man in the mirror”, the fifth track on the album.

On “Clown of the Class (Work Harder)”, MIKE spits over the looped piano taps of an obscure Christian record, bringing his gloomier sounds to the forefront. Still, on the very next track, “Then we could be free…”, MIKE flips a vocal sample from ‘70s funk band Chocolate Milk into the upbeat flow that has been similarly capitalized upon by rappers like Mavi.

As the tracklist pushes onward, it presents a seemingly endless crop of these unique and boundary-pushing samples, and MIKE asserts himself over all of them.

While some of the later tracks, like “Burning House” and “Spun Out”, ultimately feel washed out with the tide of the rest of the album, they still serve the purpose of the project as a whole.

While bloated tracklists can often hamper the cohesiveness of hip-hop projects, in this case, it allows MIKE to further showcase his versatility. Although almost all of the tracks reside at a length of two minutes and below, each has its own potency and power that scrawls them upon the memory of the listener. 

In short, Showbiz!, as a heat check, is an undeniable make and a promising development in MIKE’s discography.