Cosmic Atlanta Rap Duo Earthgang on Community Gardens, Artificial Intelligence, and Life After Death – GQ

Southern hip-hop duo Earthgang—comprised of eccentric yogi Olu and mystic WowGr8— have accomplished a lot for two friends who bonded over a shared love of music back in high school. Since signing with J. Cole’s Dreamville in 2017, they’ve released several projects, solidifying their knack for making trippy, melodic odes to life in their native Atlanta, including last year’s Ghetto Gods, the 2020 Spillage Village album Spilligion (alongside JID, 6lack and others), and 2019’s Grammy-nominated Dreamville compilation Revenge of the Dreamers III. Their new EP, RIP Human Art, is the start of a longform project—but music is far from their only concern these days.

When we meet up in early October, they’re not in rap star mode despite attending the BET Hip-Hop Awards the previous night. Instead, the pair are indulging their other passion: environmental justice. The duo’s new organization, The Earthgang Foundation, was created to create community-based approaches to solving issues such as food insecurity and climate change. The duo have ambitious, global goals for the nonprofit, but they’re starting their efforts in their hometown. When they arrive at the Hands on Atlanta office, as a group of students volunteering with the organization have just finished packing food kits full of organic spaghetti noodles, granola bars, cans of tomato soup and black beans, and more. They speak with the kids about communal responsibility and even answer a few questions about their plans for new music. Olu—who chuckles and says he recently visited this building to complete some court-mandated community service—commends the kids for volunteering.

Afterwards, I sat down with my fellow southwest Atlanta natives to discuss the work their nonprofit has done in the community, as well as how recent industry conversations about AI inspired their most recent EP, RIP Human Art.

What inspired the RIP Human Art concept?

WowGr8: Algorithms, playlists, the likes you get on social media—all of these things are created by these equations that no one had a say in. Why is our value reduced to these numbers when we came out the gate with our talents from God? It’s about the human element. We wanted to celebrate that and the intangible factor of art.

Olu: Even with the writers’ and actors’ strikes and what’s going on with them trying to use their likeness without their consent and completely do away with the human element of creativity. I believe that’s why we’re put on this earth…to create. If we take that purpose away from us, a lot of people are going to live purposeless lives and you know what that leads to.

Do the AI-created songs, images and even videos of artists freak y’all out as musicians?

WowGr8: I do enjoy it. I’m a futurist. Now, do I want to maintain my own dominating presence in my art and my career? My view has always been you gotta find the best way to use it and make a tool stay a tool.

Olu: The songs I’ve heard, [they] don’t hit. It sounds fake.

Olu: It’s about the musical aspect of what we said about creativity and the strikes. When artists die, that’s when people show them the most love and they get the most followers. They did that with Sinead O’Connor…

Olu: Yeah, people would turn them into outcasts and pariahs when they were alive, but once they die the government starts recognizing them and they have national days and stuff. On the flip side, sometimes people feel like the only way to get stardom is to damn-near fake their own death. We just wanted to jump into that in the video.