Hip-hop breakup albums carry a structural problem: the subject arrives pre-worn, and the genre's tendency toward self-mythology works against the quiet that grief requires. What clears that bar is rarely concept. It is proximity between rapper and producer. DOOMED!, released by Backwoodz Studioz, is the first full-length from Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal, and it registers as the most intimate album of Eagle's career.
Eagle's catalog has run personal throughout, with a nostalgic texture in the production. DOOMED! goes further than that baseline. Segal's production is credited as the main factor pushing the record closer to its material. The two had traveled in overlapping circles and collaborated before this album without arriving at a joint full-length.
An interlude toward the album's end, called "It Happens in Every Universe," opens with the line: "Breakups are… tough." The record takes that as its thesis. The subject is well-trodden, and the album does not pretend otherwise. Eagle and Segal bring a prior working relationship to a topic with no shortage of prior treatment, and DOOMED! is where that working relationship finally fills a full-length form.