Open Mike Eagle & Kenny Segal – Unfinished Concrete Initials (feat. Hemlock Ernst)
Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal have been friends and occasional collaborators for nearly twenty years, both having arrived in Los Angeles as young artists drawn to the Project Blowed scene. “DOOMED!”, out August 14 on Backwoodz with worldwide physical distribution via Rhymesayers and Secretly, is the first time they’ve built a full body of work together. It’s fifteen tracks, features billy woods and Gothic Tropic alongside guest Hemlock Ernst (Samuel T. Herring of Future Islands, here under his rap alias), and was described, by the people who made it, as “the world’s first half-whimsical break-up album.”
The timing was, in Eagle’s words, perfect in the worst possible way: he’d held Kenny off for long enough to use a couple of his beats on last year’s “Neighborhood Gods Unlimited”, promising they’d focus on their own thing next. His relationship fell apart right as they started. “Unfinished Concrete Initials” is the first single, and the title does a lot of narrative work: initials carved in wet concrete before you get the chance to finish them, a monument to something that didn’t make it. The production is sparse and patient, Segal pulling back to let the performance carry. Eagle’s delivery is controlled throughout, the winter driving imagery circling disorientation and a gradual loss of visibility until you’re heading downhill and can’t see it coming. Hemlock Ernst’s presence brings something rawer.
Eagle describes each of Kenny’s beats as ore from a different comet, used as a canvas to paint an impression of a dead world. That’s a precise description of what Segal does: the production never sounds like scenery, it sounds like a specific emotional weather. “DOOMED!” also moves through arguments about the colour of a rental car, a prayer for the strength not to look at an ex’s social media, and an Adventure Time character Eagle identifies with. On that evidence, I’ll take the whole thing over a single any day. “Neighborhood Gods Unlimited” made our list of the best albums of 2025. This one’s worth watching.
