Open Mike Eagle & Kenny Segal – DOOMED!

Veteran MC Open Mike Eagle has been a consistently reliable fixture of the Hip Hop underground for two decades, both as a performer and more recently as a podcaster. While his relationship with in-demand producer Kenny Segal (Benjamin Booker, billy woods) also goes back twenty-odd years, DOOMED! is their first full-length collaboration—a record brimming with such chemistry and connection that it almost feels inevitable.

The relationship between Segal’s beats and Eagle’s complex bars feels utterly instinctive, like a series of expertly judged no-look passes. Segal is superb at employing fragmented jazz samples, and his smoky, nostalgic choices provide the ideal canvas for Eagle’s ruminations on his lost relationship.

And let’s be honest, DOOMED! is a record dominated by its theme of loss. Eagle’s tone shifts as the record progresses, mirroring a typical grieving process, but there is a real sense of rawness and vulnerability scattered throughout as he reflects on the demise of a long-term relationship. There is humour, too, such as on the superb title track where the wounded Eagle drops lyrical bombs like “So fuck me and the Honda I left in/One-man superhero team, call me ‘Ex-Man’,” before reeling off a series of films he’s had to watch alone (“I saw Superman by myself/I saw the Fantastic Four movie by myself/I saw Bugonia and Weapons by myself/The Phoenician Scheme, I saw Him by myself”).

The whole record is incredibly quotable, but to regurgitate all of its best lines would risk dulling their impact, so I’ll resist that urge. Instead, I will simply note a few of DOOMED!’s highlights: the frenetic “Schrödinger's Green Room (There but Uninvited)”; “Unfinished Concrete Initials,” with its soulful Hemlock Ernst (aka Future Islands’ Samuel T. Herring) feature; and best of all, “Streets of Rage: Public Arguments Edition,” with its shimmering keys and funky rhythms.

Releases from Backwoodz Studioz rarely if ever miss the mark, but their heavy skew towards the dense and cerebral doesn’t always make for easy listening. DOOMED! is razor-sharp and technically complex, but it never feels like an effort. In many ways, it’s the label’s most immediately rewarding record in years, which is perhaps no surprise given Segal’s involvement in the only immediate rivals for that crown, namely his collaborations with billy woods, 2019’s Hiding Places and 2023’s Maps. Perhaps Segal is the spoonful of sugar that makes even the most abstract of rhymes go down?

DOOMED! is a wonderful record that draws the very best out of these two singular talents. Vulnerable, laugh-out-loud funny, and occasionally even hopeful, its sharp beats and even sharper couplets make it one of the leading Hip Hop albums of 2026.

DOOMED! is out now via Backwoodz Studioz.