Mike: Showbiz! review – a master rap craftsman building his own world

The Guardian

31-01-2025

After a life spent bouncing between the UK and US – and, now, endlessly touring – New York rapper Mike's delivery has the hazy fug of waking up from a jetlag nap. Over mostly self-produced beats, his lyrics, often written freely in streams of consciousness, sit in cosy corners of cut-and-stitched samples, comparable with the drifting verses of his friend and mentor Earl Sweatshirt or the smoother edges of Buffalo's Westside Gunn. This approach won't always lead anywhere especially illuminating, but, much like his artistic idol MF Doom, the miniature worlds he moulds are consistently inviting.
On Showbiz! – his tenth album – Mike paints in the gaps between life on the road and his rootedness in the studio. These are fleeting fragments of songs, rarely running over a couple of minutes. But they are packed with rich detail: an anxious sax loop on The Weight (2k20) as Mike spirals over the death of his mother; on Pieces of a Dream, meandering keys pan drunkenly from left to right as he repeats: 'I ain't sober yet.' His lackadaisical style belies this close focus.
Recorded in phases at his home over the course of a year, Showbiz! often feels like something being worked out in real time. On Artist of the Century he rolls a refrain between his lips – 'The prize isn't much, but the price is abundant' – as if reminding himself that his craft, rather than the steady stream of acclaim he's become used to, is why he's really doing this.