Photograph by Emily Eizen
Electrifying live performances are a signature for EarthGang, the dynamic Atlanta duo comprised of Olu AKA Johnny Venus and WowGr8 AKA DocturDot. For the two friends who met on a ninth-grade field trip at Benjamin E. Mays High School and formed their group a few years later, it’s been a heck of a ride.
Their rich gumbo of classic and contemporary R&B, jazz, gospel, and funk is seasoned with lyrical content touching on deep societal themes like social justice, AI, and mental health. Their sound first landed in EP form with The Better Party in 2010, the same year they started Spillage Village, a musical collective that includes popular Atlanta artists JID and 6lack. Two mixtapes followed in 2011—Mad Men and Good News—and then their well-received debut album, Shallow Graves for Toys, in 2013. They released Strays with Rabies, their second album, in 2015 before signing to hip-hop superstar J. Cole’s Dreamville Records and releasing three EPs. Mirrorland, their major-label debut album in 2019, was also well-received. Ghetto Gods, their 2022 album featuring fellow Atlanta artists Future, CeeLo Green and Spillage Village family JID, kept the momentum going.
Technology and community are ever-present conversations in their music. Perfect Fantasy, the final installment of their EARTHGANG vs. The Algorithm series, which began last year with RIP Human Art and ROBOPHOBIA, is part of their Tokyolanta phase. The LP features T-Pain, who got the party started with the single “Love You More,” Snoop Dogg, Swedish electronic music band Little Dragon, Damon Albarn, and Pharrell.
Outside of music, they’ve been taking care of their community and the planet with the EarthGang Foundation. Last year, they celebrated Earth Day with Vice President Kamala Harris. The City of Atlanta gave them their own day, April 27, recognizing those efforts.
Here the Grammy-nominated duo discuss what Atlanta has given them, naming Perfect Fantasy, why they are not OutKast, and what Tokyolanta really means.
Photo courtesy of EarthGang
What has growing up in Atlanta given you musically?
DocturDot: Growing up in Atlanta, it gives you a lot of perspective, because there is no monolithic Black perspective out here. There’s so many voices and representations and ideas and values that different versions of Black people represent. You get to experience all of that coming up. It’s like, I don’t like to use the term melting pot, but it’s like that, a lot of just different perspectives.
Olu: I would just say freedom. It gives you the freedom to just try to be yourself, to figure out yourself, figure out who you are … Caribbeans and Africans have a very thick cultural background and cultural upbringing. Black Americans, we’re still trying to figure it out. So at least [here] you have that freedom of being able to explore and create your legacy or create your cultural norm. Say the cultural norm is riding old-school [cars] with 30-inch rims and painting like certain signs on T-shirts, and coming up with new dances and stuff, that’s our freedom. That’s our creative contribution to our culture. And in Atlanta, there’s no bounds when it comes to that.
When you chose the name EarthGang, what were your intentions? And how has it evolved as your music career has evolved?
DocturDot: We knew we wanted to travel the world. We were both so tired of our neighborhoods and our city. [We asked ourselves,] ‘What do we want to do to get us everywhere we want to see?’ And today we’ve seen every continent except Antarctica.
Olu: And it’s evolved into our foundation as well, which continues to connect people from all over the world [through] sustainability and climate-change actionable items. [We] just really unite the world through technology and the people’s love of the planet.
Were you ever concerned about being compared to OutKast?
DocturDot: No. It always happens if you [are] a duo and you’re from Atlanta. Back when [Lil] Baby and Gunna [who did the 2018 joint mixtape Drip Harder] were doing their thing, they were comparing them to OutKast. Whoever’s doing the duo thing is going to get the comparison. Don’t dare be creative. Don’t dare do anything surprising. It used to be something we shied away from. Then it was something we leaned into and then it was something we said ‘f*** the whole thing.’
Olu: We also know that we make music for another generation. We don’t make music for OutKast’s generation. [That generation] appreciate[s] what we contribute to hip hop, rap, whatever type of music you want to call it. The content of our music and what it’s inspired by is based on the experiences of what we go through today verses previous generations.
Why did you name the album Perfect Fantasy?
DocturDot: Perfect Fantasy came through the evolution of time, like a lot of projects do. Initially we were going to call it Final Boss. We knew we wanted to have a theme that paralleled that real life was like playing a video game. Obviously, we grew up playing video games and had PlayStations in the early 2000s like everybody else. And a lot of parallels do match up with real life. Sometimes you do have to play an extra-hard level over again. Sometimes you do [have to] be the final boss in social situations, in business situations, in whatever situation. So we knew we wanted that parallel. Then Final Boss evolved to Final Fantasy. And then we realized Final Fantasy is a super-popular game franchise that’s existed for 30-something years that we both knew about. But we were just like, ‘F*** it, we’ll do it anyway.’ Then our manager suggested, ‘Since y’all have a song already called Perfect Fantasy, why not call the whole album that?’
You have a lot of good people on this album like T-Pain. Pharrell even produced a track. Talk about your approach to music and making albums.
Olu: We don’t go into it as, ‘Let’s get the most diverse creative artists;’ we’re just like, ‘Let’s get the people who we love, whose music we love…’
DocturDot: And let’s have fun.
Olu: Then it turns into the album. And that’s the beautiful part about it, because our intention is only to make music with the people we love. Nothing more than that. It’s not to try to be political. It’s not to try to push genres or push labels.
DocturDot: It’s not to make the industry different, f*** industry politics. It’s about music and the love at its core.
What is Tokyolanta?
DocturDot: Tokyolanta is basically a theme for the project. We’re inspired by Tokyo. We came up watching Toonami [programming block of Japanese anime and American action animation] after school. That [influence] never goes away. Even our characters have kind of been inspired by T.O.M. from Toonami. We have two characters on the cover of the album [and] those characters are going to be living their own life in their own version of reality throughout the whole duration of this campaign. Adult Swim office is right here [in Atlanta]. So, we came up seeing the parallels between a Japan and Tokyo [and Atlanta] our whole lives, and it just inspired the music.
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