The legend surrounding Micheal "Eyedea" Larsen has grown since his tragic death in 2010. But, during his short and prolific 28 years on Earth, the dazzlingly creative St. Paul rapper had already cultivated a mystique.
It all began in 2000. Set in New York City, HBO's Blaze Battle pitted the best battle rappers alive against each other in a freestyle competition. Think 8 Mile, but real-life and on premium cable TV.
Larsen won that year's KRS-One-hosted battle, which you can recount via his friends and collaborators in the excerpt below from a brand-new book, The Many Facets of Eyedea: Selected Writings & Oral History. Assembled and released by indie hip-hop publisher Parker Pubs, the 254-page collection features testimonials from dozens of folks who knew Larsen best, from his mother Kathy Averill to musicians like Slug of Atmosphere (who authors the intro), DJ Abilities, Jeremy Ylvisaker, Martin Dosh, El-P, Aesop Rock, Murs, and many others.
You can order The Many Facets of Eyedea, which also includes 25 poems and lyrics from 50 songs, here.
J-Bird: We had the Atmosphere Ford One tour booked, and we had to reroute this tour for Mikey (Eyedea) to go to the Blaze Battle. It was supposed to be this big battle and you could win a record deal and a car.
Janessa: The Blaze Battle was everything. He didn’t ever seem nervous. He was confident without being cocky. He had been eating people alive. He was clearly a cut above.
Kathy: There was a girl that jumped off the stage and started a fight in the crowd. Some group of people had weapons and they were threatening artists. There was a ruckus and they cleared the whole floor.
Aesop Rock: It was wild. Black Rob and Shyne performed (separately). I remember during the Shyne set, he got into a verbal altercation with someone in the crowd and ended up jumping in to fight. At some point there was also talk that someone had pulled a gun and the room all but cleared.
J-Bird: A lot of people left and didn’t come back. After the fight, I randomly ended up next to Pras from The Fugees, of all people.
Kathy: There was gunfire. Everybody scattered and they were hiding in closets and all over. I was sitting up in the balcony with Janessa. Bird and Slug and Sage Francis were down below. I screamed down to those guys, You better find Mikey or I’m coming over this railing!
Eyedea: There were people walking around backstage going, The girl wins otherwise you get your ass whooped. It was fun watching everyone try to stab and shoot each other over some battle that didn’t mean anything.
Kathy: That hour that you see on TV was like 16 hours in that hot building. It was a long, long day.
Sage Francis: I was in attendance at this battle, cheerleading pretty hard, front and center. I couldn’t contain myself. Here was this young, unknown “weirdo” from St. Paul, Minnesota, someone I considered a friend, competing in the highest publicized MC battle in the world. And he was breezing through the competition. Too easy. Like a Jedi using a light saber to slice through tomatoes. Of course there was the sneaking suspicion that Eyedea would be jerked by the judges one way or another, which made me cheer even louder.
Aesop Rock: Once the battle started, Eyedea really just sorta handled it. It felt like he was on a mission going in, and never lost momentum.
Slug: The competitors were fine, but they were not of his caliber. And it was really obvious out the gate. I almost feel like he was going easy on these dudes, like he was saving it up for the end.
Sage Francis: I’m the guy who Shells addressed in the crowd when he says something like “We can fight!” And I’m proud to say I did my best to distract him, but Mikey really didn’t need that at this battle. All these MCs were not equipped for this freestyle battle format against Mikey who was all in at the time. It was so exciting watching him slaughter each opponent, even if he was relying a bit too much on his “I grab the mic” crutch fallbacks. And that R.K. dude had his arm wrapped with whatever to conceal written lines, which he divulged to Mikey for some dumb-ass reason.
Eyedea referred to the towel around R.K.’s hand: “Yo, why you got your hand wrapped in that weak towel.”
DJ Abilities: Mike understood how to show the crowd that it was actually freestyle. R.K. was trying to distract Mike, and he started dancing. For a lesser battler, that might have thrown them off their game. But Mike was like, “This cat wants to be my fuckin’ backup dancer.” It was like an atomic bomb dropping.
J-Bird: Eyedea was crushing people. It was incredible to watch, people were blown away.
Sage Francis: When Eyedea was announced the winner, it felt like a victory for all the underdog “weirdos” in the indie scene.
Janessa: It was like, Oh my God, KRS just called Mikey the champion!
Elena: Mikey loved KRS-One. To have him say, “The champion, Eyedea…” Can you imagine KRS-One calling you a champion?
J-Bird: This kid was super young, and he won the biggest battles in the world of rapping in the span of a year or so.
Janessa: It was really special to see how Mikey and Maxx (DJ Abilities) celebrated—the pure joy between the two of them. They were partying and celebrating well into the night. They were so happy and excited.
It’s often been said that Eyedea received a large sum of prize money for winning the Blaze Battle. However, several people close to him don’t recall that. The only thing everyone remembers is that he was given the Blaze Battle jacket, which Slug was wearing in the group photo.
Kathy: I am not sure if he won any money. He didn’t get the truck they promised.
There is a longstanding rumor that Eyedea was offered a record deal by the infamous Sean Combs (a.k.a. Puff Daddy / P. Diddy) of Bad Boy Records, perhaps tied in as part of the prize for winning the battle. When asked by Hugo Lunny in 2003 if he had been approached by Combs, Eyedea stated, “Nope, he never approached me.”
Kathy: There were multiple headhunters trying to sign him. There were two or three different record companies yacking at him. I don’t know if it was Bad Boy or not. We got one contract that was 100 pages long and had all this crap in it. Maybe the deal was $100,000 up front. Mikey and my mom and I took the contract to a famous entertainment lawyer. There was a stupid clause in the very back in the tiny little print that Mikey’s words would be theirs after he died “for eternity and a day” or something stupid. That was not gonna fly. It was not something that he would ever do. He wanted to be independent and make what he wanted to make and not have to make what other people wanted him to make. So that was that.
Sage Francis: These victories put him on a lot of people’s radar and, thankfully, this was during a time when winning a battle could raise a rapper’s cachet and notability.
Slug: The best one up there happened to be wearing the worst clothing. The best one up there happened to have the worst hair. That was important to that moment because it showed a lot of people that it doesn’t have to look a certain way, all it has to do is feel a certain way. I think that opened the door to people being a little more accepting of not looking the part.
Sage Francis: Eyedea absolutely mastered a format that required an incredible amount of skill and nerve, setting the bar so high that only a select few MCs were able to reach it. I know that Mikey didn’t really care for this to be his legacy and he obviously made his mark in other ways, but it really did seem like his competitive and playful spirit was engineered specifically for dominating freestyle battles.
