MIKE — Beware of the Monkey — Mixtape Review
Abstract | Hip-Hop | Rap
Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Music
Most of you probably know how much of a reputation I have when it come to being late to the party at this point. And in the case of this (relatively) new mixtape from the insanely talented rap artist MIKE, that case still stands.
I suppose I’ll get the fact that this mixtape was released in 2022 out of the way first. But in my defence, Beware of the Monkey was released in the midst of my end of year list week. But given how much I had enjoyed MIKE’s past projects, I had to go ahead and give this one a spin (despite only just discovering it). For the benefit of the doubt, let’s just go ahead and pretend that this is a 2023 release; I will treat this mixtape as such in this here article, and will likely take it into account at the end of this year.
But to go into more depth about the past MIKE projects I’ve enjoyed, my discovery of the artist can be traced back to the the year of 2020, where MIKE was teasing his eighth studio album weight of the world. I fell in love with MIKE’s uniqueness pretty much from the get-go; there just seemed to be such a sweet marriage of being out-there and being accessible at the same time.
After this, MIKE swiftly followed through with Disco!, an album release that came to be in the summer of 2021. With this, MIKE (just about) followed through with the tradition of releasing a project once every year, as Beware of the Monkey was up next, with MIKE seeing it’s release just before the year of 2022 came to a complete close.
As the reason I’m reviewing a 2022 mixtape in 2023 might suggest, I was definitely excited to get into this one. However, at the same time I was hoping that MIKE would allow this mixtape to stand out a little more from its predecessors, as I feel that I was getting more and more used to MIKE’s sound.
Safe to say, this mixtape does indeed stand out; while the abstract hip-hop elements were still well and truly existent on Beware of the Monkey, there were still a lot of moments that did still take my by surprise, by virtue of their uniqueness.
While It’s no new thing that MIKE’s use of sampling has shown to be truly masterful across his works, I feel that he has really taken this to a new level with Beware of the Monkey, fusing what would otherwise seem like out-of-place samples to create a good handful of tracks that feel like something only MIKE could create.
One quality I’ve really liked about MIKE’s projects was his way of tweaking some of the teaser tracks to make them fit better in the framework of a larger project. While this has been done a few times here or there, Beware of the Monkey seems to be the instance where he has done this most commonly, which is something I can really appreciate.
There are, admittedly, a handful of tracks that do feel a little bit more samey and drab by comparison of the golden moments on Beware of the Monkey. However, I feel that this only speaks for just how good the better tracks are.
Essentially serving as a deserved victory lap for the artist, It’s brilliant to know that Beware of the Monkey also sees MIKE bring forth some of the finest tracks in his entire discography.
Favourite Tracks: nuthin i can do is wrng | No Curse Lifted (rivers of love) | What Do I Do? | Stop Worry!
Least Favourite Track: Light (if u can’t see)
10k
