"95 Radios": Open Mike Eagle (feat. Has-Lo)
Production: Has-Lo
Album: Brick Body Kids Still Daydream
‘And we wrapped both hands in tinfoil/pointed at the window frame/but we couldn’t find a radio’
95 Radios is a song that is out of place and time. Has-Lo’s beat feels like something off the Low End Theory and all the nineties references in both their respective verses place the song somewhere between nostalgia and a half remembered dream. The last line of the hook, ‘But we couldn’t find a radio’ evokes some kind of nursery rhyme that has faded from your memory like the distant guitar riffs in the background of the track. ‘People had a hard time finding the frequency’- He is out of sync with the rest of the world, disconnected from the youth and left alone in a world taken over by individualism. For an artist who is often revered more for his sharp satirical eye and dark comedy, Open Mike Eagle has created something which does more than comically present the ‘alien’ older generation wrapping their hands in tin foil. Just like the people in the album are physical manifestations of their environment, the people in 95 Radios are relics to a past era. They are the ones who have shared their most intimate moments with radio DJs; the ones with dusty boombox eyes.