Doomed: Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal break up in every universe
Fifteen songs about a relationship that ends in every possible universe, produced end to end by Kenny Segal. The arguing is the album.
BY JOLT Staff · AUG 14 2026 · 3 min readDoomed is a breakup album with no exit. Open Mike Eagle raps it, Kenny Segal produced it, and the argument never lands. The half-decade is finished; the misunderstandings are not.
Both men came to Los Angeles young, drawn to the scene around the Project Blowed crew, and both spent the years after building separate reputations. Eagle arrived off a run of multi-producer records, Segal off collaborations with billy woods, K-the-I???, the jazz trio Human Error Club and Benjamin Booker. Eagle says Segal was done handing over one or two beats at a time and wanted to build something.
“Every one of Kenny’s beats is a chunk of ore from a different comet. I used each one as a canvas to paint my impression of a dead world.”
It landed August 14, 2026 on Backwoodz Studioz. Segal produced, mixed and recorded it, Eagle wrote the words, Daddy Kev mastered, Shane Ingersoll made the cover and Ashes57 handled the layout. Gothic Tropic, Hemlock Ernst and billy woods take verses. The two started working before the relationship ended, which Eagle says worked out in his favor: “Then my relationship fell apart right when we started working, and it was like, ‘Perfect, I have a lot to say about this.’”
The palette is live where it counts. Saxophone, french horn and trombone sit on “Out to Lunch”. Sax and flute come back on “She Swear I'm Colorblind”, which also carries Rhodes. Guitar and bass push “Streets of Rage” and the title track, then return on “Trying to Remember What I Aimed At”, and the Rhodes shows up again on the closer. Segal produced, mixed and recorded the whole thing, so it holds one room even as the beats keep changing shape.
“Out to Lunch” opens as the pilot, a man whose head is still in yesterday, and the horns give it the widest frame here. “Streets of Rage: Public Arguments Edition” starts mid-fight about the color of a rental car, Gothic Tropic over guitar, bass and drums, and it is the funniest and most uncomfortable thing on the record. “Unfinished Concrete Initials” hands Hemlock Ernst a verse and the album its cleanest image: two sets of initials scratched into wet concrete, the stick snapping before the job is done. “Don't Go Look (Battleworld Focus Prayer)” is exactly what the title says, a request for the strength to stay off an ex's timeline. “The Irredeemable Magic Man” is built on an Adventure Time character Eagle calls a piece of shit he identifies with. “Watching a Movie Called Freedom By Myself” closes it out with Rhodes underneath.
It is for the Backwoodz audience and anyone who followed Segal through the billy woods records, Human Error Club or Benjamin Booker. It is also for people who like their heartbreak with a laugh in the middle of it. If you need the couple to work it out, keep walking.
What does not work is the length of the grievance. “The Many Hustles of my Lonely Time Traveling Uncle” and “Schrödinger's Green Room (There but Uninvited)” move without landing, and “Science Fiction/Fantasy” slips past without leaving a mark. The interlude and “Sweetheart Jail” take up space a full song should have taken. Refusing to resolve anything is the point, and by the back half it is a habit too.
Doomed earns a 3.5. Segal gives every song a different floor to stand on, and Eagle writes like a man who lost the argument and kept talking anyway, which is worth more than a tidy ending.
