“We are taking you to a whole new dimension of reality where gravity and time do not exist.” These ambitious words are those of wowgr8, formerly known as Doctur Dot. He’s one half of the eclectic, other-worldly duo EarthGang. Don’t be fooled: what he foretells is not a new Neil Degrasse Tyson special on astrophysics and all that cosmos jazz, but rather EarthGang’s upcoming album Mirrorland, their third studio project and first since signing to J. Cole’s record label, Dreamville Records. It blows me away that human personification of bong water, Post Malone, can go double platinum while genuinely groundbreaking artists like EarthGang remain under the radar, even while poised to perhaps become the next Outkast. Being from Atlanta, you can count on some silky-smooth southern drawl and a pretty significant trap influence. But there is much more to EarthGang. I maintain that wowgr8 is one of the best lyricists in the game, with bars that basically sound like Aunt Jemima’s syrup being poured onto a stack of pancakes. He and Johnny Venus synthesize in a chameleonic, Afro-futuristic way that sounds like the two are aliens that came down to Earth to bless us with sounds from another dimension. Mirrorland comes as the literal and figurative culmination of a story that began in August 2017, when they started dropping three consecutive EP’s: Rags, Robots, and Royalty. Each one mysteriously but consciously builds on the previous. Give those a listen and get hyped for the final destination, Mirrorland, dropping sometime early 2019.

Kian Blewett