Earl Sweatshirt & MIKE

Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE, two of hip-hop’s most distinctive voices, today announce a run of headline Australian and New Zealand tour dates this May including an unmissable performance at The Timber Yard in Melbourne on Saturday 23 Maypresented by I OH YOU and MG Live. Following the recent announcement of their  joint headline show as part of  Vivid LIVE,anticipation continues to build for their forthcoming collaborative album,  POMPEII // UTILITYwith  SURF GANG  (out April 3), with this tour shaping up to be one of the year’s most surprising – and anticipated – live hip-hop experiences.

Arriving on the heels of 2025 albums from both rappers – MIKE’s Showbiz!  and  Earl’s Live, Laugh, Love  – is the forthcoming collaborative album,  POMPEII//UTILITY  with the celebrated SURF  GANG, playing like a victory lap that traces their friendship back over more than ten years.  Over this time, the pair have developed a loyal working relationship, tallying notable collaborations like allstar on  MIKE’s 2020 album Weight of the World, Sentry on  Earl Sweatshirt and The Alchemist’s collab album Voir Dire. While  MIKE  and  Earl  have orbited it selectively, they haven’t fully lived inside the SURF  GANG  universe until now, making  POMPEII //UTILITY  feel like a full-circle collision of worlds.

With the recent release of the album’s lead double single Minty // Earth,  Earl Sweatshirt, MIKE and  SURF GANG gear up for an album that at its core, embodies a shared ethos that has always been a part of their creative DNA: collaboration as community-building. It evokes African and diasporic traditions where art and story are collective, iterative, relational – part of a larger whole. From top to bottom, there was a clear concerted effort to keep every angle of the project within the family.

For over a decade,  Earl  Sweatshirt has galvanised fans with his storytelling, vulnerability, and lyrical gift. Having emerged at just 16 from the raw and incendiary Odd  Future collective, Earl quickly cemented himself as a definitive poet chronicling growth, self-discovery, and the resonant moods of a generation, earning widespread critical acclaim.

Citing  Earl as one of his largest inspirations, the New York-born rap whiz kid  MIKE  made an explosive debut with the searing lyricism and scuzzy beats of his debut mixtape, MAY GOD BLESS YOUR HUSTLE (2017), wowed critics with his follow-up tears of joy (2019) and delivered one of 2025’s most acclaimed records in the incisive and extraordinary Showbiz!