With only three singles to his name, Milwaukee’s Mic Kellogg has already exhibited a distinctive style, leaning heavily on expressive, melodic rapping and personal detail—an inviting combination that caught my ear on “Breakfast (Intro)” and “Moon N’ Back.” New release “Tune Out,” his strongest song yet, puts a darker spin on Kellogg’s formula, applying his approach to the mortality of a family member and the pains of youth.
“Sometimes you just gotta throw on your headphones, turn your shit up to the max, and walk around your city thinking, ‘fuck everybody,'” says Kellogg. “That was basically my high school experience. That’s ‘Tune Out.'”
If “Breakfast (Intro)” embodied, as Kellogg said, the idea “that even when life gets tough, you gotta keep pushing and enjoy the ride,” “Tune Out” reminds us that sometimes survival is a sort of conquering in itself and that the journey might be difficult, but there’s always experience to be gained.
