Next month, on September 15, Open Mike Eagle will drop his next full-length project, a concept album titled Brick Body Kids Still Daydream. As a small preview, today, the Chicago-born/L.A. based rapper unveiled a new video for one of that record’s choice cuts, a song called “Brick Body Complex.”
In the new clip, Mike plays a superhero, vigilante type named Iron Hood, who fights back against the forces of gentrification in a public housing complex. The new song, and the entire album in fact, was inspired by Chicago’s infamous Robert Taylor Homes, a collection of 28 high-rises, 4,321 apartments and 11,000 people, that has since been demolished. Mike got the idea for the concept after watching a documentary about the Homes.
“I watched it and was transfixed by it, and hurt,” he told NPR. “I thought about the policy of erecting and destroying housing for black people, and the link I perceive between what happens to those buildings and what happens to black people’s bodies when they are murdered by the police. It all hurt a lot and stressed me out. I decided to go harder at it with my writing.”
In the song, Mike fights to defy labels while proclaiming himself a giant. “Don’t call me n**** or rapper / My motherf*cking name is Michael Eagle / I’m sovereign / I’m from a line of ghetto superheroes / I will never fit in your descriptions / I’m giant / Don’t let nobody tell you nothing different / They lying / A giant and my body is a building, a building, a building, a building.”
You can watch the powerful video above.
