EARTHGANG

Following musical breadcrumbs can lead to some tasty experiences. Eighteen months ago, I was introduced to JID when listening to a J Cole auto-playlist. Soon after, I came across longtime JID collaborators, EARTHGANG. Two A COLORS Show performances, several features, and one major label debut later, and I’ve now had the privilege of seeing them live twice. First opening for Smino a year ago, and now their headlining set for the Welcome To Mirrorland Tour.

The crowd at Come And Take It Live was buzzing after Mick Jenkins ripped the stage. The DJ filled the intermission with a nice medley of hip hop tracks, keeping the energy up. Fifteen minutes later, EARTHGANG would come out to showering cheers. They dove right in with the popular track, Proud of U, with the crowd singing along enthusiastically. Doctur Dot and Johnny Venus easily worked the crowd – posing for photos and engaging the audience in call n response throughout the show. At one point they invited fans on stage to dance. While there was some sexy twerk-age, it was the high energy dance moves of the lone guy onstage that drew the loudest cheers from the crowd.

EARTHGANG mainly played tracks from the Mirrorland album, but they did add in some older tracks and mixtape efforts like Down Bad and 1993 – “Since 1993 I’ve been smoking weed. Ask about me!” Longtime fans got to flex their catalog knowledge, while newer fans got exposed to some of their deeper cuts. Mirroland is the bridge between these two segments of fans, so the tracks from this album drew the most engagement from the crowd. Stand out tracks from the night include Blue Moon and Bank. The former is on some John Legend type ish; jazzy horns and all. Bank, on the other hand, has the type of beat DaBaby would kill in a remix. Both played well to the crowd, as they were willing to go where ever EARTHGANG would take them.

By the end, fans got to connect with EARTHGANG through the music and learned more about them as artists. Not all artists are able to translate studio produced music into a live show that feels authentic; however, this was not the case with EARTHGANG. If you have the chance to catch them live, I recommend doing so.