Open Mike Eagle / Relatable (peak OME) - Single / 2018
Relatable (peak OME)
anxious, jittery, self-mocking
A rapid-fire, stream-of-consciousness verse that mocks and inhabits the modern compulsion to seem "relatable" on social media and in casual conversation. Open Mike Eagle piles up contradictory, often absurd personal details to show how performing accessibility curdles into anxiety, self-cancellation, and a loss of coherent identity.
social anxiety performance of identity irony of internet-age relatability alienation within community self-contradiction
Who's speaking
A first-person narrator addressing an unspecified audience (fans, strangers, the internet at large), insisting on his own relatability in a way that becomes increasingly unreliable and self-undermining -- the voice reads as a satirical persona rather than a straightforward confession.
What happens
The song doesn't tell a story so much as spiral through a single social encounter or internal monologue: the narrator tries to reassure someone (or himself) that he's normal and likable, then keeps overcorrecting with random, often contradictory facts about himself, oscillating between confidence and crippling self-doubt, ending with a vague confession of having acted irresponsibly.
How it's built
Built like a looping rap verse rather than a traditional verse-chorus song -- the opening and closing sections repeat the "relatable" refrain almost like a tic, while the middle stretches drift associatively from one claim to the next without clear transitions, mimicking a nervous ramble rather than an argument.
Section by section
Opening refrain
“hella relatable”
The song opens mid-anxiety, as if answering an unheard accusation. The insistence on being relatable before any content is given suggests this is a defensive reflex, not a description.
First verse body
A cascade of personal claims -- geographic, cultural, intellectual -- accumulate without logical connection, satirizing how people construct an identity for public consumption by listing traits rather than expressing anything coherent.
Midsection turn toward sincerity
“I promise I truly and really remember you”
A brief shift from broadcasting relatability to addressing someone directly, admitting difficulty distinguishing people and feeling invisible. This is the song's most vulnerable moment, suggesting the performance of relatability masks real isolation.
Second verse, political turn
“hella political”
The repeated refrain structure returns but now attaches to political identity and racialized treatment by the city, widening the satire from personal quirks to the demand that even political stances be packaged as relatable content.
Closing lines
“it was too irresponsible”
The song ends not with resolution but with a vague admission of fault, abandoning the relatable act and letting a flicker of real self-criticism show through the parody.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated insistence on being "relatable" and "accessible" at the start of lines functions like a nervous verbal tic, turning a single word into a mantra that reveals anxiety rather than confidence.
- catalog/list structure
- The song strings together unrelated personal facts (geography, pop culture habits, a broken garbage disposal) in a flat list, parodying the way online personas assemble relatability out of disconnected trivia.
- irony
- Claims of being 'legit and not really debatable' sit beside admissions of being illogical, cynical, and uncomfortable, undercutting the very assurance being offered.
- self-contradiction as device
- The narrator claims to do what he wants and also what others want him to, live locally and internationally, be rational and irrational -- these pile-ups dramatize incoherence rather than resolve it.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats this as satire of a very particular cultural moment -- the pressure, amplified by social media and stand-up/podcast culture, to be endlessly "accessible" and quotable, where personality gets reduced to a list of consumable facts. Read this way, the manic repetition and contradictions are the point: relatability as a performance produces alienation rather than connection. An alternative reading takes the anxiety at face value, as a genuine depiction of social discomfort and imposter syndrome, with the ironic tone functioning as a coping mechanism rather than pure satire. Both readings can coexist; the song's power comes from not fully resolving which mode it's in.
Context
Open Mike Eagle is known for blending autobiographical detail, absurdist humor, and media-literate commentary, often filtered through his background in stand-up-adjacent comedy circles. This track's title and content fit his broader interest in internet culture and the commodification of personality, though I don't have specific confirmed details about the single's recording circumstances or its relation to other work from this era beyond general knowledge of his style.
Listen for
- The way the refrain of being 'relatable' repeats like a verbal tic rather than a hook
- Sudden shifts in register between trivial detail and genuine emotional admission
- The contrast between the breezy, almost deadpan delivery and the anxious content
- How the second verse pivots the satire toward political and racial dynamics without changing the song's tone
- The anticlimactic, confessional final line that breaks from the song's ironic momentum
About Open Mike Eagle
Michael W. Eagle II, better known by his pseudonym Open Mike Eagle, is an American rapper, record producer and comedian.
b. 1980 / Inglewood
Full biography and catalogue