Twin Cities rapper Michael "Eyedea" Larsen died yesterday of undisclosed causes at age 28, his label Rhymesayers confirmed. Though Eyedea began his career as a battle rapper in the late '90s, carving out a legacy for which he'll always be best known in some circles, by the time he recording albums at the start of the 2000s, he had already distanced himself from the irreverent smack-talk of battle raps, turning toward long-form stories. They were the type of dark narratives listeners hoped were fiction but feared were autobiography, tales of alienation and torment which Eyedea rapped in wry, adenoidal voice that made them sound a whole lot more whimsical than they read on paper. If he was crying out for help through his music, that voice disguised the gravity of his pleas.
On his final album with longtime DJ and collaborator Abilities, By The Throat, Eyedea abandoned traditionalist beats-and-rhymes hip-hop for turbulent grunge-rap, and remade himself as a sort of hip-hop Kurt Cobain, appearing in its music videos unshaven, sporting long, unwashed hair and dingy sweaters (including a yellow cardigan in the video for "Smile.") The Cobain comparisons weren't just sartorial. He also rapped about Cobain's dominant themes: the shallowness of American culture, the horrors of fame and the allure of drugs and death. On "Junk," a song that's difficult to listen to in the wake of his death, he rapped:
Still looks the same with the discouraged face
Made from scrap and the misplaced anger
I accidentally embraced
Its dysfunction it’s implied by its blood thirst
wanna take it all apart just to rebuild it and make it worse
"Don't fucking push me," he concludes, "I'm ready to jump."
Eyedea's mother has set up a memorial Facebook page, through which she is accepting donations to pay for his funeral services.
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