Matt Champion- Mika's Laundry (March 22, 2024)

Onlyadirector · Mar 3, 2024

Matt Champion is evolving in ways nobody could’ve predicted. Cutting his teeth as a rapper in the sprawling collective Brockhampton, he’s now matured into an artist of honesty and experience, with a glitchy, soulful sound, blurring the lines between rapping and singing while stacking and shaping his vocals into supernatural forms. His debut solo album, Mika’s Laundry, paints a dustbowl vision of the future that crystallizes his radical shift.

Lead single “Aphid” with Dijon offers a glimpse of its heart with warm, distorted gospel tones, its verses trickling bolts of electricity. Produced by Henry Kwapis, the song finds Matt exploring dichotomies between the sacred and the lustful: “Can you say hallelujah for me, so I know you wild?” Dijon croons. The video contrasts sharply, a torn-up Matt being treated for wounds and experimented on in a facility. It all has a loose, exploratory feel representative of the album’s overall direction. “The whole process of this album was trying to find something without looking for it,” Matt says. Instead of formally writing lyrics, Henry would press record and Matt would play with the textures of his voice, arriving at ideas naturally.

Matt was always drawn to the immersive worlds of music. Growing up in The Woodlands, TX, he became obsessed with the rich history of Texas rap in high school. “I felt like it was way bigger than what it actually was, so when I would meet people outside of town and they didn’t know it, I’d be like, Oh, that’s crazy!” he says. His older sister got him into pop punk and alternative acts like The Fray, but his heart was in hip-hop. He started rapping in freshman year of high school, patterning his flows off Big Moe and Z-Ro, as well as Texas-inspired outsiders like A$AP Rocky.

While in school, Matt befriended the few others there who made music, opening shows for them and ultimately joining the group that became Brockhampton, where he emerged as a vital voice and fan favorite in the group, bringing a breezy charisma to every verse. And even though he didn’t release much solo music, he showed promise; his tender 2017 song, “FANGS,” gained tremendous buzz a couple years later (it’s now at almost 75M streams on Spotify). It was only as the group began to wind down and disbanded in 2022 that he started to ponder his future.

So what did Matt want? Two weeks of sessions in 2020 with Dijon and Henry led to the warbly “Aphid” and a bunch of dead ends. A two-hour drive out to Mountain Center, CA, is where his next undertaking really blossomed. In the remote desert, he, Henry, and a small cadre of collaborators experimented with a cyborg soul style loosely inspired by the vocal stunts of Caroline Polachek, but more specifically by the video game-like world Matt was building. “I started just writing out this world and writing out characters,” he says. “I picture it as a dystopian place in the future, probably in the sticks or out in the woods. Everything still has that tone of technology, but it’s very slow-moving.”

At the center of this imaginary world is an old club that became the album’s namesake. “There was this hub in the middle that was called Mika’s Laundry, and it was sort of in my head the centerpoint of that little area,” Matt says. “I could picture what it looked like, who would frequent there, and what was happening there.”

Textures sprout from the songs on Mika’s Laundry like tendrils grasping for a dying planet’s air. Opener “Green” layers and processes Matt’s vocals so that they’re like laser beams as he ambles around lost in a mundane daydream. The album often roots itself in the warm fuzz of traditional R&B and soul, but twists it in freaky directions. Take “Slug,” which feels like standard funk until its chorus explodes into digital mist. Its video captures a lurid dystopia, depicting what look like patients gyrating in a foggy quarantine dome. Matt taps his foot robotically staring. Drum ’n’ bass track “Slow Motion” with Jennie of BLACKPINK is dreamy and idyllic by comparison.

These disparate interests are all in service of thoughtful, detailed songs about the complexities of love and life’s other existential mysteries. He writes with specific details that reveal the strangely powerful confusion that accompanies desire and affection (see the cool, intense questioning that runs through “Steel”: “Do you like that fill up space in my mind, is it empty?”) while still maintaining a sense of optimism and open mindedness. It’s a record that burns with the intensity of being young and figuring out yourself and the way you relate to other people.

Matt took his time—actual years—slowly fitting together these threads into the sequence of Mika’s Laundry. “Brockhampton was so fast-paced. The music would get made and done very quickly,” he says. “With this, I had a lot of time to marinate and sit and be in the moment and be in the world, and try to puzzle piece things together.”

A decade into the game, Matt Champion is introducing himself properly with Mika’s Laundry, and curating the sound of the future he’s envisioning: “I just want to bring people
into a new world.”

Onlyadirector · Mar 3, 2024

Although the album hasn't been officially announced, RCA has all of this available on their website lol

MATT CHAMPION SHARES NEW SINGLE + VIDEO - RCA Records

ComedownMachine · Mar 3, 2024

Very interested

tdlyon · Mar 3, 2024

Man, that's quite the description lol. Really excited to see where he goes with this, it sounds like a natural progression from his pre-BH solo stuff

Rowan5215 · Mar 4, 2024

damn these singles are great wtf

Matt Who · Mar 4, 2024

Maybe my most anticipated of 2024.

Allhailburnzy · Mar 4, 2024

Slug is my favorite song so far this year, I hope it explodes on the charts

CobraKidJon · Mar 6, 2024

digitalsea · Mar 6, 2024

Definitely missed the already released singles, so just catching up today. These are crazy good

smowashere · Mar 6, 2024

Pumped for the record. Hopefully it's in the next couple months

sawhney[rusted]2 · Mar 6, 2024

Yo slug is so good

tdlyon · Mar 7, 2024

Album coming March 22!!!

Also

Rowan5215 · Mar 8, 2024

this uhh... reminds me of Copeland? insane how much ground he's covering with these singles

CobraKidJon · Mar 8, 2024

this man don’t miss

tdlyon · Mar 8, 2024

This song is already getting a ton of attention, collabing with a K-pop star was a great move

Onlyadirector · Mar 8, 2024

This is just on another level so far. I'm so happy it's not a long wait for the album!

irthesteve · Mar 9, 2024

When the drums first kick in for Slow Motion I almost jumped

Matt Who · Mar 20, 2024

Less than 48 hours away!

JRGComedy · Mar 21, 2024

Enjoying this so far. Steel is awesome.

ghostedaway · Mar 22, 2024

Dug this a lot. Steel is definitely the one

irthesteve · Mar 22, 2024

Very enjoyable album

Matt Who · Mar 22, 2024

I love it. A Dijon/mk.gee/Matt Champion tour would be fun.

Onlyadirector · Mar 22, 2024

This was great. Sounds completely unique, just what I was hoping for from his first solo album!

JRGComedy · Mar 22, 2024

Only song that doesn’t work for me is gbiv and that’s mostly in the context of the album

gonz (Alex) · Mar 22, 2024

this is very much my shit

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