The show must go on no matter what in MIKE’s world, and lucky for the audience, the plot is only getting better as the seasons wear on. 10 albums into his prolific career which has designated him a solid spot among the most forward thinkers in the independent rap scene despite the hazed and dazed approach behind his style and flow, the latest effort from the New York rhymesmith doesn’t get away from that signature sway. Still, MIKE is building worlds within his own art on the storyboard of Showbiz!

A place for every bar and a bar in its right place when detailing the life and times by the 26-year-old through a mostly self-produced vision, though he tags in Laron, Thelonious Martin, and Surf Gang’s Harrison here for some added staging effects. The spirit of his mama continues to apparition throughout retro pitch-shifted soul glows while the rest of the grind of a nomadic artist is parsed together through looped samples, spiral beats, and brass jazz crowding his headspace whenever everything begins to feel a little whelming. A year in the life captured at 10x speed slowed within MIKE’s loose stream of conscious is under-selling it, but cohesion still makes sense, too, across the 24 tracks, most of which don’t stick around for more than a two minutes.

Building on the finer lines between 2022’s Beware of the Monkey and last year’s Tony Seltzer collab, Pinball, he’s gluing the fleeting nature of someone searching for their home base by looking at things from both hindsight and the road forward from a straighter line. Those mood boards and memory collages are still there to dot his introversions ruminated out, but there’s a pronounced precision in that formula this time around. “Some things I wish I never changed / But if it never change, it’s broke,” he declares on the synth-diffused album closer, “Diamond Dancing (Broke)”. Some of the greatest stories in entertainment burnout by going to the well one too many times with the same plot, but MIKE’s ensuring that doesn’t happen by keeping his sounding fresh.

Highlight: “The Weight (2k20”), “You’re the Only One Watching”, “Diamond Dancing (Broke)”

MIKE’s Showbiz! is available now on 10k.

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