The Making of The Many Facets of Eyedea
Under my publishing name Parker Pubs, I recently edited and published a new book about Eyedea, The Many Facets of Eyedea: Selected Writings & Oral History. Here are some thoughts on the genesis and creation of the book.
In this underground hip hop book publishing hustle, I’ve been honored to work with some of the greatest MCs of the LA underground — Riddlore of CVE, 2Mex of The Visionaries, Myka 9 of Freestyle Fellowship, and more from Project Blowed. In every book, Eyedea kept coming up. All of the LA cats spoke glowingly of his talent.
When I decided it was time to branch out of the LA underground scene, I asked the coeditor homie Kamal Al Nadi which MC really deserved a book, and his answer was unequivocal: Eyedea.
I’m a big fan of the documentary The World Has No Eyedea, directed by Brandon Crowson, and I watched it again to see if I felt there was a need for a book in addition to the doc. I saw some different avenues to explore, and I felt that we could use the documentary as a springboard. And of course it would be worthwhile publishing his lyrics.
I had never worked on a project for someone that had gone before us, and I knew the responsibility to his legacy would be tremendous. It took a while for me to mentally shoulder that weight before I got the nerve to contact Eyedea’s mother, Kathy Averill.
Kathy and I scheduled a time to talk, and I gave her my pitch. I figured she would think about it for a week and get back to me, but she immediately said, “I think you’ll do a great job.” Already she was bestowing upon me the motherly supportive vibe that she’s so well-known for. I felt greatly encouraged, and I promised her that we would do our best.
The next morning after we got the okay from Kathy, I walked to work while bumping First Born in my headphones. When the first song kicked in — “It’s time to clean MTV out of your ears” — I clapped my hands together like a prayer and said aloud: “We won’t fuck this up, Mikey.”
Kathy sent me an incredible care package full of all of his rare out-of-print poetry chapbooks, the Then and Now DVD, and numerous CDs. With Mama Eyedea’s loving support, how could we fail?
Similar to Myka 9’s book, we decided to present Eyedea’s lyrics in a poetry format and create an oral history of his life and career. I closely listened to Eyedea’s entire discography over and over, read all his lyrics and poetry books, and selected what I felt would work best in print. I read all of Kathy’s years of posts on micheallarsen.com and from them edited the chapters “Raising Mikey” and “Missing Mikey.”
I hunted down every Eyedea interview I could find and transcribed/gathered the best quotes, then arranged them chronologically to create the skeleton of the oral history. We spent 7 months landing interviews with 35 of Eyedea’s friends, collaborators, and loved ones, digging deeper and fleshing out the story of his career in music.
This book would not have been possible without the gracious cooperation of Eyedea’s friends and collaborators — DJ Abilities, Kristoff Krane, Jeremy Ylvisaker, Casey O’Brien, JT Bates, Carnage, Elena, Claire, Janessa, Sadistik, and everyone else who generously gave their time. We can’t thank them enough for sharing these heavy and beautiful memories of their friend Mike.
When I considered who could do the intro, Slug of Atmosphere was the obvious and only choice. As one of Mikey’s earliest mentors and the first to take him on tour, Slug (and Rhymesayers) provided an example of success and opened many doors for him as a young artist. As a teenager, Mikey saw his friend Slug expanding the emotional palette of hip hop in songs such as “God’s Bathroom Floor” and “Scapegoat.” They freestyled and battled each other, constantly sharpening swords. Slug’s intro and contributions to the oral history arose out of two hour-long interviews. Maximum gratitude to Slug for being so generous with his time — he told me, “We can do this as many times as you need.”
Maximum gratitude to the stalwart homie and coeditor who wields the editor’s scalpel with a surgeon’s hand — J.B. Best (a.k.a. pedestrian, one of the co-founders of anticon). His multiple read-throughs greatly improved the tone and rhythm of the oral history, and he was always down to discuss the dilemmas faced in such a serious undertaking. (And, though he would be the first to tell you that he didn’t know him well, J.B. did know Eyedea and recorded a song with him and Sole.) Thank you, Consigliere.
Late in the process, after I’d already sent the 1st draft to Kathy and started advertising online, a dude named Matt Fox messaged me: “About 10 years ago I was working on a project with Kathy and Brady similar to this. The whole thing fell through due to some personal reasons, but I still have all my old interviews, notes, recordings, etc. if you’re interested in checking them out?”
Hell yeah, I wanted to check them out. He contributed 30 fully transcribed interviews, conducted ca. 2013–2015. I promptly brought him in as a collaborator and added him as a coeditor. I printed up all his transcribed interviews into a 300 page book and avidly read through it. His work added a solid 15 pages to the oral history — he scored some tremendous gems, including an interview with El-P right before Run the Jewels blew up. His interviews made this book so much better. What great luck to team up with him. Life throws amazing curveballs sometimes. Thanks, Matt!
I decided early on that this book would focus on Eyedea’s public life, centered on his music. I did not want to be paparazzi peering behind the curtain into his private life. (The book Dilla Time really pissed me off by talking about J Dilla knocking up eight strippers. I was like, Why the fuck do I need to know this? That’s been a lesson to me — never publish dirty laundry. I ain’t TMZ.)
What to say about his addiction was the greatest struggle in creating this book. I had to say something about it — I could not sweep it under the rug. I came to a conclusion early on: His lyrics are fair game. He said it himself, and he said it publicly. So I listed all the opiate references in his lyrics. For a while, I thought that might be it. Just let him say it. I really didn’t want to ask anyone about it in interviews.
But then people started telling me without being asked. They had to get it off their chest. It felt organic that people were speaking of their own volition, without me interrogating them on this delicate subject.
I finally decided it was reasonable to show examples of his struggles and share some details about his addiction, so that the fans who loved him could have more context about how this brilliant man could die so young. Not exactly closure, but at least more understanding.
Examining the traumas and painful experiences that possibly led him into addiction is beyond the scope of this book. We do however cover the stalker situation, which Kathy wrote about at length online in the past, and the fan backlash and hate mail, which Eyedea spoke about in interviews — these are undoubtedly among the biggest traumas that affected him in his later years.
Not surprisingly, there are other painful events that occurred in his private life. Eyedea’s lines in “Even Shadows Have Shadows” are relevant here: “This is a message to anyone I’ve met that thinks they know me — don’t pretend to understand none of the issues that I’m holding.”
Going into this, we didn’t know how heavy it would be. We thought we knew, but we didn’t know. Several people cried during our interviews. I was usually able to keep it together and remain professional during interviews, but I did cry one time — when Janessa told me about her dream that Mikey was still alive and just had to get away for a while. That caught me off-guard.
I felt his absence in every person I interviewed. I cried listening to “Smile” during painful times. I cried watching Slug perform “Flicker” at the Rhymesayers 20th anniversary concert on YouTube, the audience illuminated by swaying lights. “Who told you you could die before me?”
There’s no happy ending down the path of opiate addiction. As Claire said in her interview, “No one is immune — not even a genius.” He was several years younger than me — he should still fucking be here. I imagine him at 45 years old, making the most powerful music of his career.
Working on this book has been the honor of a lifetime. My wish is that this book will deepen your appreciation of the lyrics, music, and remarkable life of Micheal “Eyedea” Larsen.
Published by Parker Pubs in collaboration with Kathy Averill, The Many Facets of Eyedea features photos, 50 songs, 25 poems, and an in-depth oral history based on interviews with 50 of his closed friends and loved ones. Eyedea’s friend and fellow MC Sadistik said, “The Many Facets of Eyedea is a beautiful book that honors Micheal well.”
