If you were hoping for MIKE and Earl Sweatshirt’s first collab record to be some lofty, ruminative meditation on grief and self-growth, I’ma need you to relax your shoulders. And please keep that Another Country paperback in your tote bag. It’s immediately clear on POMPEII // UTILITY, their new Surf Gang-produced double album, that levity can be a virtue, in line with the loose, rollicking cuts from Earl’s Sick! and MIKE’s Pinball series. Across 33 tracks split into two solo albums, two of this century’s coldest, most martyrial rap auteurs—who have bled enough on the page to paint the walls a new color—decide to flex new muscles over a decent batch of ambient plugg beats.
There’s a sense of purity about Surf Gang’s union with MIKE and Earl that makes POMPEII // UTILITY feel like there’s zero pressure riding on it. Dating back to their origin as a sprawling, grassroots rap collective, the New York producer group/label have always let camaraderie inform the music. Though there was a thrilling edge to their early work—the lightning-in-a-bottle sample drill of Polo Perks and Moh Baretta, that spine-tingling Pasto Flocco run—it’s been dulled a bit in favor of ambling minimalism. Their sound on this side of the 2020s tends to feel as sleek as it does unremarkable: vague Babyfather-type atmosphere; skittering, click-clacking percs. It’s like that side-step pull-up LeBron does that almost always seems to work. You usually shake your head at its simplicity when it goes in, but every now and then, under the right conditions, it elicits enough emotion to get you out of your seat.
Thankfully, Surf Gang’s grassroots sensibility still remains intact. Beyond head-honcho Evilgiane’s handful of major placements, SG keep themselves busy by engaging with whoever's bubbling under the surface. They count xaviersobased and Snow Strippers as signees and have spent years dropping one-off collab tapes with basically any other underground artists they fuck with: British wallflowers like John Glacier and Jawnino, oddballs like Valee and Durkalini, even 10k confidant 454.
This egalitarian, crate-digging ethos makes a lot of sense next to MIKE and Earl Sweatshirt, who’ve fostered years of goodwill from uplifting their own disciples. St. Paul rapper Lerado Khalil—whose Scenic Route tape is the best Surf Gang collab of the lot—appears next to Earl on UTILITY’s “Locusts,” fitting like a glove over the placid chimes and snaps that’ve become something of a Surf Gang signature. The vocal malaise baked into each of their tightly coiled verses relays the emotional pendulums they write about: the wisdom and fatigue that arrive with aging, the stress and reverence that come with a city counting on you. Some associate this kind of delivery with a lack of passion. I think the opposite: Here it reflects their poise in a way that says, This is the path I’ve chosen, I’ll be straight. “Leap and bound in and out of phases,” Earl raps, “Only one way to scale the gate.”
Naturally, the same can also be said for MIKE, who dedicates his sludgy drawl on POMPEII’s “Shutter Island” to navigate the bloodletting of life on the road. But there are stretches where he and Earl get too comfortable with lethargy, something that feels especially sleepy over a wispy set of beats that tend to end where they start off. On tracks like MIKE’s “The Fall” and Earl’s sluggish “Hot Water,” the music reverts to too-familiar vestiges of their past work. With lulls in momentum across the board, it’s almost like this record functions better as a playlist.
The Surf Gang formula meets the occasion on POMPEII // UTILITY with a wholesome sense of curiosity. Anchored by producer Harrison with help from Giane, Flea Diamonds, and more, the best melodies on here make up the most sunkissed, playful arrangements MIKE and Earl have ever rapped on: the spry, wavering fuzz at the heart of “Home on the Range,” the meditative drone of “#FREE #MIKE,” the twinkly chimes fluttering through “Tampering.” But the beats also answer questions I never thought to ask, like, What would MIKE sound like if Tyler sent him some shit that didn't make Bastard? (“Shutter Island”) and What if Earl opened a beat pack from Marcusbasquiat in 2018? (“rectangle lens”).
A lot of the low end on the production really knocks, too. Off the drums alone, “Ew!,” “Man of the Month,” and “F.E.A.R.” wouldn't feel out of place next to something from Veeze or Yachty. Earl unlocks his most slithery flows on “Tour de France,” full of heavy kicks and cymbal crashes.
That this isn’t a more ornate, Watch the Throne-type album is a bit deflating; the two collab tracks between the duo–“Leadbelly” and “Kirkland”–display how much of their synergy is left untapped across the 31 other tracks. It took some living with this record for it not to feel like a homogeneous, just-decent meld of MIKE and Earl throwing shots up in an empty gym. But the unceremoniousness makes sense. After all, part of the reason MIKE named his half of the record POMPEII is the fact that niggas spent so much of their time clapped in the studio; a weed-induced disarray reflective of a crumbling society. And not the type of disarray that yields an I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, but one that’s much looser. Sometimes, like on Earl’s “Chali 2na” or MIKE’s “AFRO,” it results in them smoothly waltzing with pitched-up presets, which is as fun and low-stakes it gets.
You also hear it in the money-counter fluttering at the start of “F.E.A.R.,” in Earl’s stoned “Yeahhh” tacked onto the instrumental outro for “React.” The nuttiness of Niontay’s guest verse on the former comes across like a kid who just ran off with someone’s bike. “Pushin P, man these lil niggas P. Diddy!” he spits with disgust. Everyone’s playing around but no one’s playing around. When MIKE raps, “Shit like a mukbang with the purse/I’m countin’ up cake and chicken” on “Kirkland,” you can hear an encouraging “Oooo” from Earl in the background. Levity!
