When Olu “Johnny Venus” Fann and Eian “WowGr8” Parker met on a field trip as students at Benjamin Elijah Hayes High School in southwest Atlanta nearly two decades ago, they immediately bonded over music. “We were in the piracy generation of LimeWire, so we probably stole a lot of music ripped off YouTube and MP3s,” Parker says over Zoom. “We were making CDs and sending playlists to each other, and that fan club of music kinda turned into the creation of music.”
In retrospect, Parker thinks the Wild West chaos of the file-sharing era contributed to EarthGang’s eclectic, futuristic sound. “I remember during the Lil Wayne mixtape era, our squad was going crazy and downloading so much shit,” he remembers. “Then you would see a song on LimeWire that said Wayne but it would be Coldplay or something, or it would be titled one way and the MP3 was a different song. That just expands your taste. I think that’s kinda always influenced us. Anything can happen, musically.”
More from Spin:
Blur at Coachella: ‘This Is Probably Our Last Gig’
Gorillaz Cancel Upcoming U.S. Tour
That genre-agnostic approach shows up in EarthGang’s more melodic material such as “Collide,” a 2019 R&B radio hit from the Queen & Slim soundtrack. The group doesn’t have any grand sense of their musical direction though, preferring to take things one song at a time. “We just kinda go in there and make music, bro. If the beat’s hard and I sound good singing to it, I’ma sing to it. If it’s hard and I sound good rapping to it, I’ma rap to it. I feel like making distinctions just slows down the process,” Parker says. “I don’t even think our music is that calculated. It probably should be more, Maybe we’d be Janet Jackson.”
EarthGang’s third album, Perfect Fantasy, due Oct. 29 on J. Cole’s Dreamville Records, continues the duo’s history of adventurous collaborations with songs featuring Little Dragon and Blur’s Damon Albarn. EarthGang appeared on the 2020 Gorillaz track “Opium” and toured with the group that year, during which Albarn ran quite a tight ship. “He kept stopping me in rehearsal, like, ‘Don’t sing it like that. This ain’t jazz. Sing it like this.’ He was super hard. And then the rest of the tour, he was the most laid back person ever,” says Parker. “He’s like a Buddhist zen master. He don’t give a fuck about anything,” Fann adds.
When they linked back up with Albarn to record the Perfect Fantasy opener “Godly,” the Britpop icon was in, shall we say, a more relaxed mood. “It was super easy to get him to go to the studio and super easy to get him to come to the strip club. He was just kickin’ it. We took him to Magic City, and then we made that song,” Parker says.
Indeed, EarthGang have always made music that sounds like it could play in an adults-only establishment or a spaceship. Technology and sci-fi themes have figured heavily into their lyrics, dating back to one of the group’s earliest singles, 2017’s “Robots.” Perfect Fantasy is the culmination of a series of releases revolving around the theme of artificial intelligence, reprising some songs from their recent EPs, 2023’s EarthGang vs. The Algorithm: RIP Human Art and February’s Robophobia. EarthGang’s lyrics don’t take any strong positions on the ethics of corporations using AI rather than human labor and creativity, but they’re grappling with the newly emerging possibilities and consequences like everyone else. “I think it’s a conversation we all exist in right now, so it naturally pours into the music, It permeates,” Fann says. “Who’s deciding what’s replaceable?”
The Perfect Fantasy standout “U Gotta” was produced by the Neptunes, the legendary production team consisting of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo. That may come as a surprise given that Williams recently admitted to the Hollywood Reporter that he and Hugo aren’t on speaking terms amidst a trademark dispute over the Neptunes name, but the song was tracked in 2021, when they were still working together. “That was a dream for me, seeing them together. They went through so many beats,” Parker says. “It was just so natural how they move and how they produce, like it wasn’t a big thing,” Fann adds.
The Virginia duo’s 2003 album The Neptunes Present… Clones is part of another fond early musical memory for Parker. “I bought it when I was in like 4th or 5th grade. I remember having watching the DVD and getting in trouble because there was a girl shaking her ass,” he says with a laugh. “My mom saw me watching and was so mad.”
Their close friendship has always driven EarthGang’s musical chemistry, but one of the biggest challenges in any rap group is the lyricists listening to each other, and making sure a song’s verses stick to the same subject matter. “Two dudes just coming in just saying two different things, it can work sometimes,” says Parker. “It works better to sell the song and get it to connect with people if everybody’s on the same page, though.”
“‘Red Flag’ is a good example of that,” Fann says, referring to a slow, loping Perfect Fantasy standout with psychedelic guitar noodling and lyrics about bad relationships. “[Parker] put the idea down and his verse and sent it to me, and there was a period of me settling into that zone before I was able to speak my truth on that record.”
In addition to EarthGang, Fann and Parker are part of the eight-member collective Spillage Village alongside the Atlanta stars JID and 6lack. Spillage Village’s most recent album, Spilligion, was released in 2020 but the crew is always getting together to work on music. “We made a lot last year and the year before,” Parker says. “When we have a Spill session, it’s a Spill session. Everybody knows when you come, these are Spill songs that we makin’ right now. Whatever is on there, that’s what it’s going for.”
In addition to all their musical pursuits, EarthGang are outspoken climate activists with several side gigs. Parker is working on a comic book series and has even dipped his toe into standup comedy. “Comedy is the purest art form,” he says. “If you’re a musician, you can get people to agree with some bullshit off a hard beat, but with comedy, it’s like, no, I’m just saying this shit butt fuckin’ naked. Let’s go.”
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.