Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE Shapeshift on Surf Gang-Produced ‘Pompeii // Utility’

In an age when monoculture has all but disappeared and “niche” is a chief descriptor of taste, MIKE and Earl Sweatshirt have become two of the increasingly stratified underground’s most dominant voices. They share remarkably similar signatures: Their beats sound as though they’re actively dissolving, and both rap from the back of their throats, softening consonants until verses resemble elliptical tone poems. It’s easy to get swept into their records’ beautiful haze on an initial listen, but each subsequent playthrough feels like eyes adjusting to a darkened room. You’ll start to notice certain lines, then grasp the complexity of their patterns, which often involve swallowed syllables and clever slant rhymes. You’ll realize their plainspoken vulnerabilities were always at the forefront, and marvel at how effortlessly they build such emotionally layered albums. There are many talented artists treading similar ground — Navy Blue, Maxo, demajiahe, Spote Breeze — but few are as virtuosic as MIKE and Earl.

They’ve circled each other for years; Earl first learned of MIKE a decade ago, and after an introduction from rapper and mutual friend Wiki, they’ve been rotating between instructor and acolyte. MIKE is the more prolific of the two, averaging at least one album a year since he first emerged. Earl is a little quieter; it can be years between releases, but it’s always an event. Their work is celebrated by critics and loyal fans alike, and each time they drop, there’s a cogent argument that their newest is their best. The rappers seem to build off of each other, and all of their collaborations, like the soulful ooze of “Sentry,” a highlight from Earl and the Alchemist’s Voir Dire, or “plz don’t cut my wings,” a weeping tune from MIKE’s opus Burning Desire, unfold with easy chemistry; you can imagine the two of them completing each other’s sentences in conversation. When they announced POMPEII // UTILITY, their new joint double album, it felt natural, surprising that it hadn’t happened sooner.

Instead of producing it themselves, the duo linked with Surf Gang, the New York-based collective of Gen-Z rap nerds that fashion neon-lit, insular soundscapes from the scraps of trap and drill. It’s a logical step given the rappers’ recent dalliances with more electronic sounds: MIKE’s team-up with Tony Seltzer for the Pinball series was a welcome evolution, showing how well his gluey baritone fit over ratcheting hi-hats and chest-caving 808s. Earl has been dipping his toe in these waters for a little while, rapping over Black Noi$e and Samiyam production on SICK! and joining El Cousteau for the mechanized DMV heater “Words2LiveBy.” Both have worked with Surf Gang before — Harrison supplied the robotic samba for “Belly 1” on MIKE’s 2025 album Showbiz!, and Evilgiane and Clams Casino produced Earl’s jittery 2023 single, “Making The Band (Danity Kane).” 

POMPEII // UTILITY isn’t a full-fledged duo record per se; it’s the two using the same launch pad to explore different galaxies. MIKE and Earl both have a solo half, and each appears once on the other’s project. These are grown-up records that find them taking stock of their lifestyles and responsibilities: MIKE, now 27, runs 10k, the label arguably at the vanguard of rap, and Earl, 32, is a young elder statesman, occasionally making records and settling into a pleasant cadence of fatherhood. Both come off as comfortable and confident, joyful but not exuberant, reflective but not morose. Across POMPEII // UTILITY, MIKE and Earl take an instant to slow down and consider themselves, the way a long look in the mirror or a midday breathing exercise can be centering. 

On POMPEII, MIKE is loose and relaxed, draping his flows across drums like a cozy throw blanket. We’re often dropped into these tracks in media res, as if we've opened the wrong door and happened upon a hotboxed studio session. MIKE lets the seams of his songs show, keeping the mumbled rehearsals before verses and choosing less-than-perfect vocal takes with slight rhythmic stumbles. It gives cuts like “THE POPE” and “MY WORST (rebuke)” a diaristic tone, stream-of-consciousness documents of the present moment. There’s a healthy balance between flex raps (“I done been to EU hundred times, feel like down the street,” he brags on “NOT 4TW”) and introspection (“Much of life, tug of war/I trusted lies and bloody swords,” he mutters on “Shutter Island”), and a recurring recognition that his community is at the root of his comfort. The pervasive grief that’s colored previous records lingers, as grief always does, but MIKE’s learned to let it churn in the background.

Earl’s half, UTILITY, is similarly contented, but there’s a smiling curiosity underpinning his writing. He sounds enlivened, retooling his approach to experiment with some of the most adventurous flows of his career. He has a muted appreciation for regional markers: On the elastic “Earth,” Earl’s words rush and pool with a DMV urgency; the melodic sluice on “AOK” draws from MAVI’s Charlotte drawl; you can detect hints of New Orleans bounce in his delivery on “Chali 2na.” Like MIKE, he divides his topics between material displays and interior monologues, lamenting friendships lost to age while bragging about appearance fees. It’s clear that he’s having a lot of fun, finding new ways to recommit to the pleasure of making rap music.

Harrison, one of Surf Gang’s most forward-facing producers, helms the lion’s share of the album, lending a hand to 25 of POMPEII // UTILITY’s 33 tracks. A plethora of other names, like Surf Gang members Evilgiane, Elipropperr, and Flea Diamonds, and satellite affiliates like Tony Seltzer and Osyris Israel, round out the credits. Despite the number of cooks, the record has a strong spine of synth pads and skull-rattling bass, with the diamond-cut drums scattering around the central pulses. Surf Gang invert trap conventions, leaving pronounced gaps between bars and inserting percussion into unintuitive spaces, shading the bombast with an almost anxious hesitance. It can take a few listens for the rhythms of jams like “Leadbelly” and “Tampering” to gel, but there’s always a satisfying moment when it clicks. 

MIKE chooses the more amorphous beats, the ones that could dissipate into the atmosphere, were it not for the drums. A song like “Kirkland,” with its watercolor keyboard line and muffled clap, is mere degrees from candlelit ambient music. The vibe that fits his cobwebbed style, wherein verses often feel like memories briefly caught on rocks in a shallow stream. It’s tempting to compare POMPEII to Pinball, given the stylistic markers, but Beware of the Monkey might be a better analogue. Both balance uncanny metallic and dreamy textures, and every beat could have been looping for hours before MIKE started rapping. 

UTILITY has sharper edges and a heavier knock, a slight Southern rap influence signaling that Earl’s half might be more concerned with trunks than earbuds (to complement, Earl says he’s “looking for the chewin’” on “Chali 2na,” a quick reference to Memphis legend Kingpin Skinny Pimp). Surf Gang populates his tracks with more defined sequences and melodies, arranging echoing synth bleeps and rattling kick thumps into efficient, interlocking matrices. It could be a photo negative of Some Rap Songs: That record had some of Earl’s most legible deliveries while the music crumbled under his feet like eroding sea cliffs, but UTILITY flips that idea, with Earl rapping languorously on beats full of acute angles. The beauty of POMPEII // UTILITY is in reconciling the short walk between the artists’ similarities and the yawning gulfs of their idiosyncrasies. Earl’s half might be more immediate than MIKE’s, and MIKE’s might be more gaseous than Earl’s, but they’re equally spellbinding. It’s a wide-eyed look at the turning gears, the excitement at knowing that everything can always change shape.