Iam embarrassed to admit that it took me so long to discover EarthGang.
They have that hip-hop style I love, keeping the spirit of Outkast (fun, freaky, dirty South) alive, and have earned comparisons to that particular ATL duo because of their Afrocentric, psychedelic qualities; their experimenting with tempos, delivery styles, and production genres; and how they churn out tracks mostly free of violence, misogyny, and zealous, plutocratic dreaming. They’re a duo, too—rappers Olu (aka Johnny Venus) and WowGr8 (aka Doctur Dot). Of course, EarthGang have their own idiosyncratic ways and don’t actually sound much like Outkast.
Olu and WowGr8 came together in high school, further cementing their friendship and creative collaborating in college, where they spent their time recording in dorm rooms with local producers. They released a few LPs, an EP, and several mixtapes and comps via their own Spillage Village label (also the name of their Atlanta/Baltimore collective), before catching the ear of J. Cole, who signed them to his Interscope imprint Dreamville Records in 2017.
EarthGang’s first three Dreamville EPs and the major-label full-length debut that followed in 2019 were inspired by 1978’s all-black Wizard of Oz redux The Wiz. The EPs whetted the appetite of old fans, introduced EarthGang to new fans, and took them all on a journey with the scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion (the EPs were called Rags, Robots, and Royalty, respectively), eventually arriving at the Emerald City with Mirrorland. And the welcome party begins with the album’s opening track, “LaLa Challenge.”
As Olu told Pitchfork, “We thought about how, if we’re going to make a project sonically to rival The Wiz, we got to create another world for people to imagine and go to. You know when Dorothy got swept away and she met the Munchkins? That was such a beautiful thing. You could see Quincy Jones on the piano, just playing away. That’s what ‘LaLa Challenge’ is about.” He continued, “It’s really colorful. It’s really dangerous. It’s really trippy. It’s literally Freaknik Atlanta in the summertime—folks riding around in cars with big rims with paint on their faces.”
They wanted to capture the film’s outrageous appeal, its essential blackness, its deep musicality—the same sort of vibe reflected in their ATL home. In Mirrorland, they succeeded on many musical fronts: the fast-paced, eerie-scary, anti-capitalist, pro-freedom triumph-call of two rising stars in “Up” (“You don’t know yourself, when you come into some wealth / You the type to let it change you / All I’m sayin’, make money, don’t let money make you”); the earwormy, upbeat, carefree rolling-through-the-city-joint that is “Top Down”; the sinister, quasi-bravado of “Bank,” with its rhythmic, onomatopoeic refrain; the unexpected time signatures, Latin-flavored guitar-lick-driven, drunken-horn-blown jam that is “Tequila” featuring T-Pain, many well-placed “ohs,” and raps about easing stresses with a glass of tequila; the soulful groove of relationship ode “Trippin,” and a sexy, flagrant counter to the men’s raps by sweet guest R&B singer Kehlani.
Overall, Mirrorland is a fucking banger, and it reflects each rapper’s distinctive yet complementary styles and personalities. Olu has the gnarly, demented quality to his raps, is most likely to deliver the chorus, is the half of the duo you’ll usually find wearing the illest and weirdest threads, with vibrant head wraps holding back his pile of dreads. WowGr8’s style both in performance and fashion is more straightforward eccentric, his raps slicker, his tonal quality velvety to Olu’s huskier drawl.
Both men are lyrically agile (though they can trade between quicksilvery and dirty South syrupy), clever, witty, able to be both odd and catchy, fun and serious, and capable of crooning or belting a sweet line as well as flinging rhymes (see the relaxed, stripped-back groove of “This Side”).
EarthGang’s rise has begun in earnest, and it feels like they’re edging ever closer to stardom. Here’s hoping their quirky charm is still intact when they arrive.
