When local underground hip-hop mainstay Mike “Mic One” Malinowski died in late July, you could see the grief online. On Twitter and Facebook, local rappers and producers—some active since the 90s, some with careers that began this decade—offered their condolences. Malinowski himself got started in the 90s as a member of the Noise Pollution crew, and he had roughly two decades of solo material under his belt—his first album as Mic One, Who’s the Illest?, came out in 1998. In those decades he built up enough goodwill to last a couple generations: as longtime collaborator Chad Sorenson (aka DJ Risky Bizness) told me over the summer, “Mike was loved by everyone, because Mike was the guy who would go to your show—even if there was ten people there, he would be there.” Malinowski’s friends and fans have continued to honor him since his death, and late last week a mural of his face appeared on the graffiti permission wall in Logan Square just southwest of the Blue Line tracks on Fullerton.
“I actually really froze, to the point where my fingers were so numb I couldn’t spray,” Gunter says. “It was kind of grueling for me to do it, but I know how much it meant to other people.”
