“Feel like all of this life that I have, man, this shit could inspire a book,” MIKE raps with conviction on “F.E.A.R.”, the eighth song on a new collaborative album, POMPEII // UTILITY, with rapper and friend Earl Sweatshirt. The record’s whopping 33 tracks, produced by NYC’s hyper-present post-pandemic supercollective SURF GANG, compile an intimate chronicle of experience, memory, and kinship into a record that, in breadth and detail, digests like a book. A project several years in the making, POMPEII // UTILITY unites two kindred spirit rappers from opposite coasts within SURF GANG’s world-building genius, to trace a musical bond and mutual admiration shaped through early collaborations and features, shared stages, mutual friends, and a devoted fanbase.

Across several albums and widespread critical acclaim, Earl Sweatshirt has cemented himself as a definitive poet chronicling growth, self-discovery, and the resonant moods of a generation. MIKE is a quintessential old soul — his calm delivery and measured questioning carrying a quiet wisdom. Once making waves in NYC’s underground hip-hop circles with the [sLUms] collective, MIKE’s inner world has come further into focus as his career has expanded. 

Structured as a double-sided experience — MIKE on one side, Earl on the other — POMPEII // UTILITY unfolds through a rotating cast of side quests and characters from within its shared creative ecosystem. Jadasea, Anysia Kym, Niontay, Na-Kel Smith, and Lerado Khalil all make appearances, passing through the album’s vast terrain, while behind the scenes, SURF GANG producers EvilGiane, Harrison, Elipropperr, and Flea Diamonds (with input from additional producers) wield the gritty, raspy, animated beats that build its container. The production is fast-paced and immediate, rough around the edges, embracing in-real-time energy over polish, at times pushing MIKE and Earl into uncharted territory. While each has orbited it selectively, they haven’t fully lived inside the SURF GANG universe until now, making POMPEII // UTILITY feel like an anticipated, full-circle collision of worlds.

The album began simply: SURF GANG’s Harrison sent around beats that both artists recorded over the course of a month or two before deciding to develop it into a full project. The album’s title and conceptual framework draw from the eruption of Pompeii, with themes of building and destruction reflected in both the artwork and ethos. During one particularly baked studio session, the energy in the room slipped into a haze where they describe feeling “frozen in time,” sparking the image of Pompeii. 

Arriving on the heels of 2025 albums from both rappers — MIKE’s Showbiz! and Earl’s Live, Laugh, Love — POMPEII // UTILITY plays like a victory lap that traces their friendship back over more than a decade. On his side of the album, MIKE raps with loose self-assurance, a man who is fully aware of how far he’s come. Part reflection, part flex (Europe feels like his backyard now he boasts on “NOT 4TW”), he sets the tone for a project that sounds like it was undeniably fun to make. Lyrically, Earl moves between reckoning and recalibration. On “Locusts,” the father of two raps, “My olders taught me it’s the only way,” uncovering motivation as necessity. “C’est la vie to my older friendship” he raps, acknowledging how life moves on, relationships evolving and dwindling. On “Kirkland,” lines like “I got no horse in this race, nothing obstructing the flight path” feel like moments of hard-won perspective.

Masters of internal monologue, both rappers unmask across the project with signature self-interrogation, swapping unanticipated flows over SURF GANG’s quick, browser-tab-like structures. On “this2shallpass,” Earl sounds almost like Chief Keef in his big-talk: “Before we start, let’s get one thing reestablished, it’s only up that’s the destination.” On “Rectangle Lens,” he channels Chicago rapper LUCKI’s meditative haze, while on “Chali 2na” and “Don’t Worry,” his voice pitches upward, as if speaking to a younger version of himself. Both rappers treat language carefully: fragmented, coded, and sometimes withheld. Embedded in their artistic alignment and kinship is a layer of intergenerational mourning — music that holds the weight of grief which predates them yet endures: colonial violence, exile, and rupture, without turning it into performance. On “#FREE #MIKE,” lines like “I made a flame in the dark” and “Niggas changed so I had to be out” read as MIKE’s meditations on freedom in a world that can feel like a prison.

At its core, POMPEII // UTILITY embodies a shared ethos that has always tied MIKE and Earl together: collaboration as community-building. It evokes African and diasporic traditions where art and story are collective, iterative, relational — part of a larger whole. MIKE raps about survival as a child of the diaspora, carrying memory through sound. Earl, whose lineage is steeped in political thought and activism, carries a diasporic consciousness that reverberates beneath his poetic sensibility. Where two rappers going head-to-head might otherwise incite rivalry or comparison, POMPEII // UTILITY offers something rooted and communal — a shared understanding of care, joy, grief, process, and responsibility to something larger than yourself.

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