Kenny Segal and Open Mike Eagle put out a joint album called DOOMED!

Open Mike Eagle and the producer Kenny Segal have released a joint album, DOOMED!, which Pitchfork, The Quietus and HotNewHipHop all reviewed on August 14. HotNewHipHop describes the 15-track record, produced entirely by Segal, as a half-whimsical breakup album that filters the end of a five-year relationship through Eagle's humor and surreal storytelling.

Open Mike Eagle is a Chicago-raised, Los Angeles-based rapper known for an eclectic, literary style of rap, and Segal is a Los Angeles producer whose past work with Billy Woods, on the albums Maps and Hiding Place, sits among the past decade's more acclaimed abstract hip-hop records. DOOMED! is the pair's first full collaborative album despite close to two decades of friendship and occasional work together.

Billy Woods, Hemlock Ernst and Gothic Tropic all make guest appearances on the record, with Pitchfork singling out Hemlock Ernst, also known as Future Islands' Samuel T. Herring, for giving the album its own soul inflection even though he raps rather than sings on the track.

Pitchfork's review highlights Eagle's self-aware humor as his way of coping with the breakup: "I used to wonder if I existed," he raps on "Schrodinger's Green Room (There But Uninvited)." On the title track he catalogs everyone and everything he has withdrawn from since the split, down to solo movie trips: "I saw Superman by myself, I saw the Fantastic Four movie by myself."

The reviews frame DOOMED! as a strong outing for both artists, with Pitchfork noting Segal pushes his usually psychedelic beats into more forceful territory to give Eagle's bleaker lyrics solid ground to stand on.