Elliott Childs explores the urban narratives of Los Angeles art-rapper Open Mike Eagle.
Open Mike Eagle Photo: supplied
Growing up in London, I would occasionally see big blocks of council flats being razed to the ground to make way for an expensive new shopping centre or luxury apartments. Cities, by nature, are ever evolving beasts and gentrification is nothing new, but often, it’s not entirely clear what becomes of the displaced residents of the buildings that are torn down. It’s this question that is the inspiration for Brick Body Kids Still Daydream by L.A based art-rapper Open Mike Eagle. Here, he looks at the Robert Taylor Homes, a huge housing project in Chicago that was demolished 10 years ago, leaving nearly two thirds of its mainly African American occupants unaccounted for.
Brick Body Kids Still Daydream Photo: supplied
Each song serves as a vignette, capturing one face of the many that lived in the housing blocks. Eagle leaves room for ambiguity and interpretation and makes use of clever narrative devices in many places. For example in his lyrics and even in the album’s artwork, Eagle combines both residents and buildings. Both the lives of and the lives lived in these buildings merge in to one and the forces of destruction eventually take their toll on both equally.
In 95 Radios, Eagle and collaborator Has Lo, present a lighter look at adolescence in a housing project, particularly the connection to others through music. The track is relaxed and has the feel of a certain type of low-key hip-hop from the 1990’s, but underneath, there are grim reminders of friends who have gone down darker paths and the stark poverty that makes finding a working radio so difficult.
But, The Robert Taylor Homes were demolished 10 years ago, why resurrect these buildings now? As Eagle sees it, this story is just a small part of a much larger problem. Yes, this an album built around the history of one housing project, but at its heart, it’s about race relations in the USA. In My Auntie’s Building, lines like “Where else in America will they blow up your village?” highlight the fundamental inequality at play when areas like these are bulldozed. It’s in this uneasy track also that Eagle reveals that 10 years after the demolition, the land that the housing project once stood on, is still empty.
Eagle’s delivery is passionate but tempered and often discreet. He inhabits his characters with conviction, staying true to their stories. But whilst the production moves from jazz influenced soul to sparse, unrelenting synth and drums, there is little respite from hardship described in the lyrics. Brick Body Kids Still Daydream serves almost as much as a political essay as it does a Rap album and Eagle paints such a vivid picture of life in the Robert Taylor Homes that it’s hard not share his outrage at what happened to its residents.
