Beloved rapper, screenwriter, comedian, and polymath Open Mike Eagle has reunited with acclaimed producer Kenny Segal for their new single, “Watching a Movie Called Freedom By Myself,” accompanied by a music video directed by Elise Valderrama. The release serves as the latest preview of their forthcoming collaborative album, DOOMED!, arriving August 14 via Backwoodz, with worldwide physical distribution through Rhymesayers and Secretly.
The new single follows the album’s lead release, “Unfinished Concrete Initials,” featuring Hemlock Ernst, and offers another glimpse into a project that blends emotional vulnerability with the pair’s signature wit and offbeat creativity.
Described as “the world’s first half-whimsical breakup album,” DOOMED! unfolds across 15 tracks that transform the emotional fallout of a fractured relationship into an absurdist, darkly comedic narrative. Years in the making, the album captures five years of emotional upheaval, misunderstandings, and introspection through Open Mike Eagle’s sharp lyricism and Kenny Segal’s inventive production.
While deeply personal, DOOMED! is also rooted in Los Angeles, a city that has shaped both artists since they arrived as aspiring musicians drawn to the influential underground hip-hop collective Project Blowed. Despite nearly two decades of friendship and occasional collaborations, the album marks the duo’s first full-length project together.
After completing several collaborative albums with artists including billy woods, K-the-I???, Human Error Club, and Benjamin Booker, Kenny Segal was eager to create an entire project alongside Open Mike Eagle. The timing proved ideal, as Mike found himself processing the end of a significant relationship just as recording began.
“In recent years, Kenny made it very clear that he wasn’t trying to keep having one or two beats on my projects; he wanted to build something,” Open Mike Eagle explains. “I was able to convince him to let me use a couple beats for Neighborhood Gods Unlimited with the caveat that we would focus on our thing next. Then my relationship fell apart right when we started working, and it was like, ‘Perfect, I have a lot to say about this.’”
Throughout the album, DOOMED! unfolds like a prestige television series, with each song serving as another episode in a surreal emotional journey. Themes range from lingering heartbreak and unresolved arguments to memories frozen in time, all filtered through Open Mike Eagle’s uniquely humorous perspective and Kenny Segal’s cinematic production.
Reflecting on the project’s sonic landscape, Mike describes it as a series of emotional collisions.
“Each vision is a crashed airplane halfway on the border of dream and nightmare, bitter and sweet, sadness and freedom. Every one of Kenny’s beats is a chunk of ore from a different comet. I used each one as a canvas to paint my impression of a dead world.”
With “Watching a Movie Called Freedom By Myself,” Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal continue to build anticipation for DOOMED!, a project that promises to be one of the year’s most inventive and emotionally layered hip-hop releases.
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