Component System With the Auto Reverse

Open Mike Eagle is a rapper who used to craft mixtapes spliced together from radio recordings when he was a kid, and those mixtapes became the soundtrack of his youth. His latest album, “Component System with the Auto-Reverse,” is a nostalgic trip through his musical genesis and an exploration of his psyche as an artist who recently lost his wife, his job, and some of his closest friends. The album reflects both his embrace of Los Angeles and his Chicago roots, and his choice of collaborators feels less like clout-boosting streaming bait and more like homies who can rap well, which makes for a laid-back cipher vibe that reveals the album’s raw but carefully considered aesthetic. The album’s coda, “CD Only Bonus Track,” closes the loop on Eagle’s stroll down memory lane, with a beat and a verse from one of the New York heroes that sent him on the path away from Chicago in the first place.