Last year, Open Mike Eagle released an excellent album called Anime, Trauma And Divorce, and he also launched his own podcast network. The Stoney Islands Audio network has a bunch of shows, but its crown jewel is What Had Happened Was, the show where OME sat down with the legendary producer Prince Paul and got the stories on a bunch of the different projects that Paul worked on over the years.
It was great! Open Mike Eagle is a great rapper and also a voracious fan of rap history, and Prince Paul is a garrulous figure with a ton of stories. Different projects got their own episodes: Three Feet High And Rising! Handsome Boy Modeling School! Gravediggaz! Stetsasonic! That one Chris Rock album! The whole thing fit pretty neatly into a 12-episode season, and it left room for another one with a different legendary guest. Today, OME has announced that the second season will start next week, and it'll feature a rapper/producer with just as many stories to tell as Prince Paul.
On the next season of What Had Happened Was, Paul will sit down with El-P, and he'll talk about all the different projects and phases of El-P's career: Company Flow, the Definitive Jux label and crew, Run The Jewels. El-P has been instrumental in willing a lot of rap classics in to being, and he's a towering figure in the '90s and '00s underground, as well as the circa-now not-quite-underground scene. Also: He loves to talk! And he's great at it!
In a press release, El-P says, "I was psyched to sit down with Mike Eagle and do what every artist likes to do most: talk endlessly about myself. Hopefully my shattered, weed addled memory didn’t get too much in the way."
We don't specifically know what El-P and Open Mike Eagle will discuss, but I hope we get a Weathermen episode. I hope we get episodes on the beefs with Sole and with 7L & Esoteric. I hope we get a full episode on Mr. Muthafuckin' eXquire's "Huzzah" remix. This could go so many places! The first episode goes up online 3/31, and there will be a new one every Wednesday.
