When did you first meet MIKE and Earl?
Thebe came to the first Surf Gang show we ever did, in Los Angeles. So we were like, “damn, that’s crazy as fuck that he pulled up low-key.” But it made sense, because he’s always been tapped into everything, for sure.
Me and Giane pulled up on MIKE one time in New York around 2022 or 2023, and that’s when they made fucking “Minty,” the song that just dropped and that was like a long time ago. But MIKE, like we had known each other in passing and had mutual friends for a while. Same with Thebe too. That MIKE song was just a random one-off session when COVID was super happening. It was right when they had dropped “Real hiphop,” and after that, I just started pulling up on MIKE.
Somehow the idea came that we were gonna do a tape. It didn’t have a name yet — It was just gonna be like some one-off, small tape. There’s been versions of Pompeii that we were completing before that were way shorter. And that happened just for half a year, a year, making shit, going to MIKE crib sometimes, just making a song every time we would link. And then Thebe hit me.
We just got to talking on DMs about something and I sent him beats.Then two or three years ago, we [me, Giane, Elipropperr] all went to L.A. together. We had this Airbnb, it was super fucked up. Like the toilet literally exploded. But I remember, Thebe pulled up and then we went to Alchemist’s studio on the West Side. He played us the four or five songs he had made on the beats that we had sent him. He had an album cover and all this stuff ready and we’re like, “damn, so we’re making this tape?”
The first song was “Chali 2na” and that was with Giane. And then he did “Don’t Worry,” which he had already texted me. And “again” was on it, and “again” especially, I was like, “this shit is so tough.”
We started working a lot and we formed a more general collaborative relationship. He’s just helped me so much. And then MIKE came out to L.A. one time too, to finish the shit, and that’s when it got named POMPEII. Thebe had had the name [UTILITY] for his shit mad long ago.
Eventually shit got to the point where it was like, it should just be a thing that’s together. It was the Speakerboxxx/The Love Below joke that turned real, but it wasn’t even a joke. It was just the idea that seemed kind of, “damn, would be crazy,” and then shit just worked out.
