Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE, and SURF GANG drop POMPEII//UTILITY, a 33-track double-disc collab album rooted in NYC creative community
There is a folder on Harrison‘s hard drive simply titled “Good Beats.” It contains, by Earl Sweatshirt‘s description, an infinite number of them. That folder, and the chemistry between three camps who had been quietly orbiting each other for years, is where POMPEII//UTILITY was born. Released April 3, 2026, the 33-track double-disc collaborative album from Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE, and NYC producer collective SURF GANG is out now on 10k, Tan Cressida, and Surf Gang Records under exclusive license to The Harp.
Earlier this week, all three parties gathered at a Stone Island in-store listening event in New York City, sitting alongside album artist Sharif Farrag, to speak openly about what it actually took to make the project happen. What came out was less a press run and more a conversation between people who trust each other completely.
“We have a whole counsel situation over here,” Earl said that night. “I think that’s why it works well. We review everything from every single perspective.”
Two Discs, One Shared Language
POMPEII//UTILITY is structured as a split record. The first disc, POMPEII, belongs to MIKE, 15 tracks thematically anchored in destruction and aftermath. The second, UTILITY, is Earl’s, 18 tracks leaning colder and more deliberate, guided by SURF GANG’s crisp, syncopated production. It is the SURF GANG beats, provided by Harrison, evilgiane, and Eera, that function as the connective tissue between every song. It was Harrison who pushed for the project’s existence in the first place.
The collaboration did not announce itself loudly. After Earl and MIKE linked for “Making the Band (Danity Kane)” in 2023, the idea of a joint project surfaced casually. “All of the conversations in those moments were anticlimactic,” Earl reflected at the listening event. “It was really just like, ‘Yo, you trying to put out a project?’ and we were all like ‘Yeah.'”
That low-key origin is consistent with how both artists have always operated. Since Earl was streaming MIKE’s early Bandcamp tapes from his phone back in 2015, and MIKE joined Earl’s Fire It Up Tour in 2019, the two have built a relationship defined by quiet mutual respect rather than calculated rollouts. SURF GANG came into the picture with the same kind of inevitability, a Brooklyn collective that grew out of skate culture and guerrilla shows during COVID lockdowns, eventually placing beats with Kendrick Lamar and Baby Keem before landing here.
The making of the album was physically unglamorous and creatively alive. MIKE described working until unreasonable hours. Earl explained his personal rule for preserving the energy of each beat: “I didn’t open any of the beats and listen to them unless I knew I was about to follow through. I cared about all of these beats, so I didn’t want to play them out until they got bland.”
The album’s title came from a real moment. During a particularly extended studio session, the room fell into an exhausted stillness. Someone noted that the bodies scattered across the studio, frozen and tired, looked like the preserved figures of ancient Pompeii. The name stuck. UTILITY came from a different logic, Earl’s preference for social fluidity and usefulness, for a word that resists being pinned down.
Community as the Architecture
What makes POMPEII//UTILITY feel different from a standard collaborative release is what MIKE calls an “unspoken creative synergy.” Nobody was performing for anyone. Earl described learning something new in the sessions. “I learned how to simplify my process. I learned how to play nice with others. I learned how to make beats with n*ggas. I thought I knew that before, but I didn’t know how to do that before. I learned how to do that with the gang.”
Evilgiane spoke about growing up in New York, listening across genres, and how that restlessness feeds directly into SURF GANG’s sound. “Every time a rapper and a subgenre of music comes from New York, that keeps me inspired and not doing the same thing over and over.” The album bears that out. Across its 33 tracks, it moves through hip-hop, ambient, cloud rap, and alternative without announcing the transitions.
The guest list reflects the same community logic. Niontay, Anysia Kym, Jadasea, Na-Kel Smith, and Lerado Khalil all appear, artists connected to 10k and the SURF GANG orbit. No reach outs. No features for the sake of features.
MIKE closed the panel with a joke that didn’t entirely sound like a joke:
I have this joke that when I’m 45, I’m gonna do a residency at Cafe Erzulie. That’s where we was at”
Earl and MIKE will take the album on the road this summer, with European and UK dates running through August and September, including stops in Glasgow, Dublin, London, Bristol, and Brighton.
POMPEII//UTILITY is out now on all streaming platforms. Vinyl editions, including a tiger stripe POMPEII pressing and a clay UTILITY edition, are available at the official store.
