Ah, hi everyone, Bigthony Stresstano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE, and Surf Gang album (albums?), Pompeii // Utility.

Here we have some new albums from rappers Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE, of course teaming up with the New York music collective Surf Gang. And what we have here is maybe one of the most ambitious crossover projects we are going to hear coming out of hip-hop this year, with the foundation of them being the unbreakable creative bond of MIKE and Earl, two of abstract hip-hop's most important and influential voices right now, frequent collaborators, lifelong friends who have been making music and inspiring one another for years now.

But the point of this Pompeii // Utility double feature is not for them to collaborate in the way that many fans might expect, because between the 33 tracks on this record, only two of them feature Earl and Mike sharing space with their verses together, but again, these records do come as a package deal, in sort of an OutKast, Speakerboxxx / The Love Below sort of way. Sister records where both Mike and Earl respectively get their times to shine, with the most major common thread that pulls all of it together being the production of Surf Gang, who again are a New York-based music collective with a pretty deep roster of producers and rappers.

And they have a history of doing entire projects centered around one singular guest or collaborator, be it Matt Ox, or Alabama's Durkalini, UK artist Jawnino as well, just to name a few. So, as crazy as this Pompeii // Utility crossover might be, this is the sort of thing Surf Gang has been doing for years now. Especially since Mike and Earl seem amenable to feasting on Surf Gang's usual buffet of ambient-leaning plug beats with super crispy snares and dreamy synth layers and samples. Not the typical thing Earl and Mike are known for rapping on top of the loopy, jazzy, stripped-back, skeletal Alchemist production they have buttered their bread with for years.

So, yeah, Earl and Mike are definitely doing something different here, embracing the change, and as a result I was excited going into this project, hoping to hear what Surf Gang's production might do.

Would it drive Mike and Earl to approach things vocally, lyrically, in a different way? Because truth be told, I think both of them maybe are in need of a bit of a switch-up. They sometimes have the tendency to bore me to tears, though it's not as if they don't both have their moments. Earl's last, Live Laugh Love project showed a lot of personal growth, and I thought it was one of his best in a while. Meanwhile, I still do very much mess with the great production choices and more high-energy performances from MIKE on 2023's Burning Desire.

But now that I've heard the entirety of these back-to-back records, I don't know if it's Surf Gang's beats or just the general collective collaboration vibe of these projects, but I kinda think Pompeii // Utility bring out some of MIKE and Earl's worst artistic tendencies: a lack of direction, a lack of enthusiasm, a lack of consistency, a lack of follow-through, of substance, of focus. Once again, I do love MIKE's vocal range, the heft and depth of his voice, his occasional allusions toward introspection.

And, you know what? He can drop some pretty memorable one-liners here and there when he wants to. ("Frequent dreams of falling in that black hole / your man's a frog and his homie tadpole.") Plus, his performances and earworm flows on tracks like "Minty," "AFRO," and "#FREE #MIKE" are definitely standouts too.

But for the most part, MIKE is once again asleep at the wheel here, and his flows, his deliveries, are so sloppy and so floppy that his lead vocals barely line up with the many overdubs he's recording on these tracks, which, even if intentional, sounds annoying as hell. And look, I'm not even expecting this guy to hit, like, the most flashy, fast, or technical triplet flows known to man. I was hoping just for the bare minimum of sounding awake, or being able deliver a whole verse without having to stop dead in his tracks because he stumbles on a word and restarting. The guy raps like he's hot off a few shots of novocaine at the dentist. Even with "Back LA," it's insulting to hear just how little he seems to care, with his vocals at one point just fading out randomly, out of nowhere, only for his guest Na-Kel to pop in and awkwardly attempt to sound just as low energy as him, but it's basically impossible.

And even when MIKE does sound more present on his half of these two records, he can't even be bothered to put a proper ending or cap or transition at the finish of these tracks, so they just, like, fizzle out out of nowhere, be it "Tampering" or "Shutter Island" and many others. And look, I know I'm not the biggest MIKE fan in the world — that's part of why I didn't really say too much about his last Showbiz! project, which I didn't enjoy as much as Burning Desire, but it sounded decent and acceptable by his usual standards — but this over here, by comparison, just– is even more low effort. It's almost like he's hoping the Earl tag and the Surf Gang production essentially drag this thing across the finish line for him.

And look, that's not to completely ignore Earl's efforts on his side of the project, which, yes, these two albums share very similar vibes, especially with that consistent Surf Gang production.

And I do think Utility is a slightly more gratifying listen. I wouldn't say Earl is necessarily rapping or writing with the same level of purpose he was on Live Laugh Love, but there's still a very valid experience going on here with this assembly of tracks, 'cause Utility feels like it's actually achieving the very intoxicating vibe that Pompeii is hoping to shoot for, but it doesn't quite get there. Or, maybe another way of reading this is it's kind of like a Lucki album for people who got a good grade on a poetry project.

Because from the start on this thing, Earl is bringing much more evocative imagery in his lyrics: "They crumble in the castle, all that money over fam shit / Mud on the casket, blood on the canvas." But still, even if Earl's pen game is very much there, a lot of these tracks still sound pretty unfinished and scant.

I will say, it does seem like Earl and Surf Gang put a bit more effort into making sure the transitions between some of these songs were tighter and more fluid, resulting in Utility having a bit more of a cohesive experience. And look, if you're willing to dive into these tracks and look past the very nonchalant presentation Earl is giving them, he does have some undeniably witty and funny moments. But despite the praise that I do have for this side of the album, that doesn't mean it's without its moments that are just too listless, too dry, and too lifeless. And it seems like Earl and Mike knew this project was going to be a bit of a splitter among some of their fans. I mean, Earl was even quoted as saying, "The real hip-hop fans are about to be off. To some people, this might be the weakest shit we've ever dropped."

And if there are Earl and Mike fans who genuinely feel that way, I kind of wonder why. I don't feel like their usual vocal and lyrical approaches are all that different. In fact, I would argue Earl playing it as cold-blooded as he is on this album makes way more sense within the context of these super droney, super ambient Surf Gang beats, and kind of puts him in league with the kind of stuff guys like Xaviersobased have been dropping lately.

Now, I don't know if there are fans out there who want to hear him going in that direction, but you know, that's the kind of vibe it's giving off. Also take into account that the track "quikk" is like just a whole-ass synth interlude. There's also the song "AOK," which has some very, kind of low-key, sleepy sung vocals from Earl too. There are even some moments where Earl doesn't even really seem to be all that present vocally on the track, with one of Surf Gang's members kind of taking the lead.

So comparatively, it does seem like Earl took like a little bit more of an abstract, out-there approach to the way he assembled this project. I admire he took maybe a few more risks in the second half of this thing, but it still led to an overall listen that, again, to my ears was very underwhelming, which is why I'm kind of feeling like a 4 on one of these records, a 6 on the other. I'm gonna split the difference with a decent 5 and leave it there.

Anthony Fantano, MIKE, Earl, forever.