Rating: 9/10
Leaders come in many forms. In the world of hip-hop, the culture has benefited from an innumerable lineage of pioneers, artists, and rebels who have continued to march the music forward. New York rapper/producer Michael J. Bonema, AKA MIKE, definitely meets that criteria, and his torch-bearing within the underground NY rap scene remains gravely under appreciated and under discussed. Since 2016, the 25 year-old MC has cranked out project after project of smoky, soulful sample chops and muttered lyrical gymnastics. He’s also founded his own record label, 10k, home to artists like Sideshow and Camden Malik, and in 2022 he helped orchestrate the Young World music festival, which featured performances from a litany of up and coming artists. Needless to say, MIKE’s style and DIY prolificacy have become a fastening point for peers and followers alike, and his embracement of both has forged him into an undeniable — albeit understated — champion.
MIKE's latest LP, Burning Desire, arrives less than month after his last full-length release alongside fellow NY-rapper Wiki and legendary producer The Alchemist, Faith Is A Rock. The album certainly had a few moments of greatness, but I personally felt pretty lukewarm on the project and found both the performances and production to be somewhat lacking. This sentiment is one that I've felt for the majority of MIKE's releases over the past few years. I'd certainly consider myself a fan of his work, but in general, the looseness and abstraction of MIKE's usual style has never been enough to grip me for an entire project. Last year's Beware of the Monkey definitely caught my attention, and seemed to herald a new era in MIKE's musical journey. With the release of Burning Desire, I'm happy to say that that journey seems to have set sail, since this is easily my favorite album MIKE has ever released, and it basically capitalizes on everything I've ever wanted his music to be.
The concept behind Burning Desire is alluded to in the album's opening narration, where London-based musician Klein reads from a passage that can be accessed in full on the album's accompanying website: "[Burning Desire] tells the tale of a fire deeply rooted in revenge and devastation, masked with an intricate beauty... A mediocre mask carver, kin to the [Dan] tribe, hails the weight of lackluster dexterity... One day the low self-esteemed mask carver awakes and treads into his living room to be met by a delightful surprise: a very finely carved, wooden mask." MIKE's music has never strayed far from his multi-cultural roots, but both the sound and concept Burning Desire make a concerted effort to firmly plant the record's feet in celebrating and contextualizing his African heritage (the album's cover is an homage to hand-painted Ghanian movie posters). The imagery of the masks, which are stated to be ceremonial representations of spirits that have manifested themselves into the physical world, bears a great deal of resemblance to the way this album's lengthy track-list also plays out. Across 24 tracks, MIKE carefully crafts sonic manifestations of spirit and soul, resulting in a record that sounds achingly alive.
As the opening narration denotes, however, this record is not merely a heartfelt tapestry of beautiful imagery; it's the result of a fiery, rage-filled desire to create that distills centuries of strife into MIKE's pen. His performances are focused and hungry, delivered with raw emotional vulnerability and uncompromising wordplay. Take "Dambe" for example, where MIKE is able to deliver an emotional uppercut in less than 16 bars through the sheer strength of his writing and the power of his emotive performance. "I hope you glisten where the stars stay/By sitting by your arm I get to listen to your heart play." It's these sort of heart-breaking one-liners that have made him such an important artist to so many fans around the world. MIKE isn't concerned with wowing you by the sheer feats of his performance; he aims far more squarely for the soul and concocts pieces of music that crystalize those unknowable ruffles in your heart into songs you can listen to again and again.
MIKE's production has never been something to scoff at, but in my opinion, his work on Burning Desire is on a whole other level. Sitting down with this record is an incredibly cohesive experience that MIKE carefully guides your ears through, blending skits and interludes with fully-formed songs and multiple guest features. Longtime collaborator and fellow underground griot Earl Sweatshirt makes a notable appearance on "plz don't cut my wings," where the two rap heartfelt verses over a gorgeous arrangement of string samples. San Francisco's rising star Larry June drops an unexpected but undeniably welcome verse on "Golden Hour," where his Cadillac-smooth flows somehow combine with MIKE's playful braggadocio over one of the funkiest beats on the album. El Cousteau and Niontay provide an electric energy to the stand-out posse cut "Mussel Beach," wherein the trio of MCs utilize a backdrop of humming bass and Vaporwave-esque synth notes to explore scatter-shot flows and hard-hitting punchlines: "My flow overcomin' all the mimosas."
Without a doubt, however, the true star of Burning Desire is MIKE himself, and many of the album's most impactful moments occur on the bite-sized concoctions scattered throughout the runtime. "Zap!" is a fuzzy abstraction of jovial horn sections, and MIKE's sing-songy rhythm carries the track through to its unexpected follow-up, the eclectic and abrasive "African Sex Freak Fantasy." The track sees MIKE indulging in unabashed gloating and hip-hop machismo, and his unstoppable flow cuts through the madness of the instrumental like a locomotive through traffic. "Snake Charm" and "Zombie" are both meditative songs that pair two of the best beats on the album with introspective reflections on intimacy and self-doubt. The title-track features a touching outro which references a real-life moment when the aforementioned Young World festival was threatened by an oncoming storm, but upon playing the then-unreleased "Burning Desire," the clouds instantly lifted. It's a touching moment that highlights MIKE's incredible penchant for capturing slices of his own life within his music, and it lends to the album having a personal and almost diary-like aesthetic.
Wifhout a doubt, Burning Desire is MIKE's biggest album to date, clocking in at a bit over 50 minutes in runtime. At times, this extended length can make a full listen of the record feel like a bit of a chore. There's a handful of tracks here that come and go without much memorability, especially in the middle chunk of the record. Still, these slight hiccups do very little to actually disrupt the flow of the album, since very few of the tracks here extend past more than two minutes. "Baby Jesus" and "Do You Believe?" are the only two cuts that I haven't found myself returning to much at all, but their inclusion is far from unnecessary or egregious. The big picture of Burning Desire is so well conceived of that the smaller snags and nitty-gritty missteps are quite easy to forgive.
As a curator and composer, this album showcases an incredible amount of growth for MIKE. His music has always possessed a beautifully handmade quality, wherein his songs often celebrate and acknowledge the process that created them. On Burning Desire, he manages to streamline that same homemade energy into transcendent feats of musicianship. Look no further than "Should Be!" a 2 minute instrumental interlude that might just be the best song on the album. Centered around a haunting sample loop, the track is an emotional gut punch that demands every iota of the listener's attention. The song slowly and meditatively expands, featuring distant string sections, what sounds like a wailing infant, and some indecipherable vocals from Crumb's Lila Ramani. Upon first listen, this song presented a bit of a roadblock for me and my experience with the album; I found myself basically unable to move past it. As previously stated, I've always had an immense respect for MIKE and his work, but I've never quite had the "a-ha" moment many other listeners seem tend to attest to. Even a cursory glance at any of MIKE's comment sections will reveal hundreds of fans that speak to his music as a therapeutic and life-changing part of their library. Personally, I never really experienced his music at that sort of emotional level, and was admittedly a little bewildered at times by the sheer passion of his fanbase. Finally, I can say that not only have I gotten the hype; I've discovered a MIKE song that means the absolute world to me.
The same sentiment can be applied to the entirety of Burning Desire. Going into the record, my expectations were similar to how I'd felt about all of his previous albums: intrigued, but far from enraptured. Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered that Burning Desire was everything I didn't know I was hoping for. I have no doubt that this is my favorite album MIKE has ever produced, and I'm quite willing to bet that it will go down as one of the finest pieces in his discography. I simply haven't stopped enjoying this album since its release, and it's provided me with a greater appreciation of MIKE's other work as well. There are truly few rappers, let alone artists, who posess Michael J. Bonema's distinct ability to capture the depths of his soul and translate it so brilliantly into music. Burning Desire is a seminal moment in the career of an understated master of his craft, and while I might regret arriving to the party late, I'm still quite thankful to have been invited at all.
Favorite Tracks: Dambe, Zap!, Snake Charm, U Think Maybe?, Zombie, 98, Burning Desire, THEY DON'T STOP IN THE RAIN with TAKA, Mussel Beach, Should Be!, Golden Hour
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