Los Angeles, CA / New York, NY · abstract hip-hop

Earl Sweatshirt & MIKE

1 upcoming festival

Two generations of abstract rap in one set — smeared loops, mumbled brilliance, and the mentor-protégé chemistry that reshaped underground hip-hop.

Earl Sweatshirt is a Los Angeles rapper who first drew attention as a teenager through Odd Future, then moved steadily away from that context across a series of increasingly interior records. His later work trades conventional song structure for short, dense tracks built on dusty, off-kilter loops, with a low, half-swallowed delivery and writing that rewards close listening.

MIKE is a rapper and producer based in New York, associated with the sLUms collective and known for warm, sample-heavy beats he often makes himself under the name dj blackpower. His music shares Earl's fondness for murky texture and compressed running times, and the two have appeared on each other's records repeatedly, making a shared bill a natural extension of a long-running working relationship.

abstract hip-hop