Stereo Mike

Michalis Exarchos, often spelled Mihalis Exarhos, was born in Piraeus in 1978. In a 2005 interview with the Greek website hiphop.gr he traced his path in music back to a synthesizer he came across at the age of seven. Classical piano followed, then blues and jazz improvisation and finally electronic composition. After school he decided that knowing how to produce would give him musical independence, so he took a degree in music technology in Britain and then a master’s in sound production in London. He worked as a sound engineer and programmer before presenting himself as an independent artist and producer.

His debut album, Σάτυροι Νομάδες (Satyr Nomads), appeared in 2004 on Mo’ Money Recordings. In spring 2005 the video for Η Πόλις (The City) brought him to a wider Greek television audience, and his first concert took place at the An Club in Exarchia, Athens. With EMI in Greece he released XLi3h in 2007 and Ανέλιξη in 2011. That year he and the singer Loukas Giorkas took Watch My Dance to Eurovision in Düsseldorf, where it finished seventh with 120 points. In March 2013 he became the first Greek hip-hop act to perform at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. Alongside his recordings he pursued what his own thesis calls a parallel academic career, completing a practice-based doctorate at the University of West London in 2022.

Stereo Mike raps mainly in Greek over beats he produces himself, and his records combine Greek lyrics with English titles, guest singers and studio techniques learned in London. In 2005 he described his music as open-minded, independent, alternative hip hop. He said that working in London gave him the distance he needed to tell stories, and that he usually wrote lyrics while travelling. Σάτυροι Νομάδες, he explained, described both himself and anyone who sees things in a nomadic and at the same time satirical way; the album gathered sixty minutes of sounds and lyrics inspired by his musical and geographical journey. Its tracks include Ο Άλλος Μπάμπης (The Other Babis) and Η Πόλις.

The next two album titles play with spelling. XLi3h, which he also produced, renders the Greek word Εξέλιξη (Evolution) with Latin letters and a digit; Ανέλιξη (Ascent), also styled Aneli3h, keeps the same root and changes the prefix. That album includes Όπου με πάει η μουσική (Wherever Music Takes Me), a phrase he had already used in 2005 when asked where he would rather live. Watch My Dance, the Eurovision entry, alternates English and Greek lines. His research turns a producer’s experience into scholarship: the 2022 thesis examines how hip-hop producers create new material that sounds like old records, so that they can keep a sample-based style without relying on copyrighted samples.

Stereo Mike’s career links Greek-language rap with major-label albums, television, Eurovision and an international festival stage, while his research brings a Greek producer’s view into the study of record production. For learners, his album titles are a compact lesson in word formation. Write εξέλιξη (evolution) and ανέλιξη (ascent) one above the other and underline the shared root έλιξ-, related to the verb ελίσσω (I wind). Add εξελίσσομαι (I develop) and write one sentence of your own about a change in your life. Then watch the video for Όπου με πάει η μουσική and, without reading any lyrics, mark where the stress falls in each word of the title: όπου, πάει, μουσική.

• He told hiphop.gr in 2005 that he usually wrote lyrics while travelling.
• XLi3h hides the Greek word Εξέλιξη (Evolution) in Latin letters and a digit.
• His March 2013 set in Austin was the first Greek hip-hop performance at South by Southwest.
• His doctoral research was accompanied by the creation of an instrumental album.