Review Summary: this definitely got a bit heavy-handed
For me, musical has always had something of a spiritual element to it. It’s not one that’s necessarily pegged to any religion or idea of a higher power, more so just a general other-worldliness. Losing oneself in music is meditative but still visceral, motionless but exciting.
Of course, it takes a certain connection with an artist to be gripped by their music in such a way. Personally, I found such a connection in MIKE, the 18-year-old rapper and member of the New York City based collective sLUms. Much was written about MIKE’s epic tape May God Bless Your Hustle when it was released in the summer of 2017. That album was sixteen tracks and studded with features from other members of sLUms—Johnny U, Standing on the Corner—and their affiliates, as well as Mal Devisa, Wiki, and King Carter.
That album, to put it simply, was amazing; May God Bless Your Hustle is a beautiful emotional narrative about a young man who lost his mother to deportation. It synthesizes his struggles with feelings of abandonment and insecurity, as well as the more pragmatic pain of poverty.
MIKE followed up on the success of Hustle with a short, four-song EP: By the Water. Released early in the fall of 2017, By the Water further develops the sound that made its predecessor so appealing. A short album, each track flows unbroken from one to the next. The beats are ambient, undercut by distant city made to sound as if they’re seeping through your headphones. Tapping high-hats, waltzing pianos, and mixed-up vocal samples are elemental to the production.
Interestingly—despite the overall sequencing of the EP—the beats are occasionally hesitant. They abruptly stop and start, rise and fall almost as if they’re a YouTube rip burned onto a scratched CD. I couldn’t figure out who the producer was for By the Water, but it seems fair to guess that is was either sLUms member 6press, who made most of May God Bless Your Hustle, or MIKE himself.
MIKE’s verses are delivered in a strangely substantive monotone; the inflection of his voice rarely changes but its stoicism—combined with evocative lyrics—convey the true emotion of the song. In a weird way, this album feels religious and not only on “God’s With Me”—the final and arguably most beautiful track. MIKE’s verses are almost like prayers, appeals to the things he’s lost and those he wants to find.
As an artist, MIKE has the sort of self-doubting talent found in Earl Sweatshirt, a rapper with whom he has real and thematic connections. At certain points, MIKE asserts himself, particularly on “HURDLES,” where he says, “Don’t address me as MIKE if you don’t know me as much.” But on the same track he also raps, “Too much pain in me boy can’t smile today,” and “Can’t pretend to be great.”
On “WAIT FOR ME,” By the Water’s third track, MIKE raps, “Wash my soul away in the ocean with the spirits.” That bar speaks to the fundamental character of the album: both bleak and faithful, a sort of pained optimism that reflects the trauma behind MIKE’s creative energy. By the Water is a pure expression of the idea of artistic pain. It seems to be less a conscious piece of entertainment than it is an attempt to understand some very personal emotions.
