Song Exploder - Open Mike Eagle - Dark Comedy Morning Show (feat. Toy Light)

Episode Date: July 15, 2014

In this episode, rapper Open Mike Eagle talks about making the song Dark Comedy Morning Show, along with the track's producer, Walker Ashby, aka Toy Light. Mike breaks down how Toy Light's original instrumental version of this song inspired him, and how his view of his own vocals on the track has changed since recording them. 

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi K. Hirway. In this episode, rapper Open Mic Eagle talks about making the song Dark Comedy Morning Show, along with the track's producer Walker Ashby, aka Toy Light. Mike talks about how Toy Light's original instrumental inspired him, and how his view of his own vocals on the track has changed since recording them. We got that dark, dark comedy, that dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark comedy. This rap is ruin the puns line like stand-up club hecklers doing the puns line. My name is Open Mike Eagle. I write and record and perform rap music.

I'm Toy Light. I produce for Mike on a couple songs. I was in Boston about a year ago, and there is a guy out there who promotes. shows by the name of Connor and he puts on shows up there so he likes to stay very abreast as to what's going on especially with like the LA beats scene he's the kind of person where when you're just sitting at his house talking he's just kind of playing beats and playing music the whole time and he played this track that really caught my ear and like I made him repeat it and then I made him tell me who it was and then I went on the sound cloud and it was it was one of Walker's tracks he goes

into the name Toilight. And so when I saw that he lived in L.A., just when decided to reach out. It was really, really wonderful to get that message from him. I'm really familiar with a lot of the rap stuff around L.A. And it's pretty small, you know. Yeah, it's all kind of the same family, you know. It's all kind of connected.

Yeah. It was flattering that he liked it so much. I think what first caught my ear about the track, I don't know a lot of, like, music theory terms, but I feel like there was a chord progression that was really interesting. For me to really, really get ready to write a song, it's like I have to let the beat get me pregnant almost. You know what I mean?

Like I have to like, I have to let the beat like live inside of me to the point where like I can recreate the beat in my head when I'm away from it over and over again. It's about like finding a frequency and answering whatever questions this being is asking me. I can spend enough time with it beat in a few days to get that way or in this case, I. actually spent quite some time with it, hanging out with it. It was a process. It was a little longer than it usually would take me, but I think that's more to do with just where I was in an album and trying to figure out a different way forward. Yo.

Dark comedy cold is the ocean out of loa, because nobody seems to know when I'm joking. For those who haven't heard of me, I'm bad at sarcasm, so I work in absurdity. I had relegated singing to hooks only in the past, where this album I definitely played more with singing deliveries of rap lines and going in and out of singing, going from singing into straight rapping and back to singing even within the same song. My relationship to singing is kind of developing over time. Because my genres are hack, actions cliche, melodrama falls flat. What I was noticing then when they were playing right now was, how emotional the delivery kind of sounds, especially without the music. Like, I hear myself sounding really vulnerable about the words as if I was, like, reluctant

to say them. That was kind of striking me right now. My more immediate memories of the song right now are the last 10 or 12 times I performed it, because it's been in my live set lately. And so now, like, you know, if I'm in front of a crowd, I'm definitely delivering it with more emphasis, with more weight now. So it's interesting to hear that naked. it on the record, it's that kind of timid. But actually, I find that's the case for a lot of my

songs. It's over the course of learning how to perform them, which is usually like a year or two later, even after the song is already out, then I have a whole completely different relationship with the lyrics. And so I often feel like, oh, I wish. But it's just kind of no way for me to get that, unless I wait five years before I put stuff out. On that laugh to keep from crying tip. That laugh to keep from crying tip, I mean, it's a specific reference from a trap called Quest song. What's the reason for the loft? I really can't say I guess I'll have to keep

for crying. So much going on. People killing people dying. That's a line that just comes and goes people never talk about it. I think the line is kind of important. That line always struck me and I wanted to borrow that

for like a thesis statement. I was an art major at UCLA and one of my focuses was a sculpture and there was this giant sculpture junkyard in the back of the lab where it was just a free-for-all of materials to mess with. And I would just go back there with my handy recorder and toss things around and just sampling

just like a couple seconds of that. I probably looked like a freak out there just like scraping around. Really just warm, deep sub-based. I wanted you to almost not even hear it. It's really just to be kind of a floaty foundation, you know. It's just a warm song, you know? Super warm and super, and I think it was the contrast of the super warmth with that anchor in hip-hop. The drums are like, they're heavy in a way, even though they're not even a lot there.

Like, it's still got like this, this heavy rhythm inside of that warmth. Like, that's the kind of beat I'm always envisioning hearing. Drums can be like kind of heavy hip-hop production drums, but still have like these musical elements that are, you know, more ethereal, what entertains me is trying to find that balance between like what's dark and heavy and what's funny and playing with those lines. It put me in the headspace of wanting to be vulnerable, wanting to be very honest, and I felt like it was challenging me to go someplace that I was like afraid to go. And now here's dark comedy morning show in its entirety. Because nobody seems to know when I'm joking. For those who haven't heard me, I'm bad as sarcasm. So I work in obsessive.

On that laugh to keep me from fire tip rap like wired versus chatting weird science Because my genre is all hacking actions cliche Well a drama falls flat And everybody's getting fired I flew off the handle and boy you my arm's tired Rap songs like cat jad them shaded gas doll up to the Zard So they laughed at it Rap songs like Steve but right monotone drum beat

I wonder if you're reeling right. We got that dark, dark comedy, that doctor, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark, dark. This rap is robo in the punch line, like stand-up club hecklers doing the puns line. Because I tweet on Sunday morning like a preacher at a church, because my true religion is the thirst. It's like burn after reading. The dark ugly proof that addicts learn after me teams. Sean already wrote about the modern man. Only other option is the plight of the hologram.

It's a dark comedy I would have called it black. If another dude calls me a racist, I'm a snap. Because Google knows what's in my cabinet and Facebook logs all of my favorite sandwiches. And what they need the damn data for to analyze this shit, they'd need a whole other labor for. Because I'm addicted to my cellar, and I gotta have some coffee in my belly you smell me.

Unless it's in the shy, Visit the Blacks and Mexicans can die I'd like We're living John Mining songs Match the tracks suit like dude and loyalty in the mounds It's like the in-living color cast and laughing Try and not to wish death on the upper class I'd like to run up on the cold,

brus, made an old brother Poston drops from cold Visit the world instead thinking something sarcastic I always would laugh Visit songexplor.net for a link to buy Open Mic Eagles album, which is called Dark comedy. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I

last put out of full ink. And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh, her way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the process. And this album is the of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Robe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting

in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In The Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live.

Thanks. You can find all the past and future episodes of SongExploder at SongExploder. Or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts. Find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary story-driven shows. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. My name is Rishi-Kesh Hereway.

Thanks for listening. Radiotopia.