It was just a little bit after 12:30 p.m., and Olu and WowGr8 were dancing on top of a Land Rover Discovery.
The duo that makes up the hip hop group EARTHGANG was doing some promotional shoots on the first day of the Dreamville Festival in Raleigh. Olu – also known as Johnny Venus – sported baggy black pants and a shirt that local company Raleigh Denim Workshop created out of black yoga mats.
WowGr8, also known as Doctur Dot, also known as Eian Parker, wore bright red pants with sequins and a hoody that read: “Howl at the Moon,” the name of a side project he’s been working on.
The Atlanta-based duo performed later that day at the festival, which is the obvious reason that they’re in Raleigh. But the weekend wasn’t limited to music. Olu co-led a yoga class on Friday morning, and their nonprofit the EARTHGANG Foundation set up a booth at the festival to talk about a climate change initiative that they are collaborating with Microsoft on.
“Everything that (the organization has) is because of them,” said Dr. Jazmine Alexander-Nicholson, the foundation’s executive director.
WUNC’s Kamaya Truitt caught up with the duo before their set to talk about community, art, and accessibility.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Kamaya Truitt: Can y'all tell me, why Raleigh? Why be here tonight? What impact does Dreamville have on the community?
Olu: Oh, it's all about community with us. We got our EARTHGANG foundation right next to the Dreamville Foundation. Everything we do is geared toward community, toward sustainability, toward connecting people, and toward making a better place to live.
KT: Anything to add to that?
Doctur Dot: Hell yeah.
KT: Can you tell me just the roundabout reason why building this foundation and launching it on Earth Day was important?
Olu: You know, we just thought it was in alignment with some of our values. And we wanted to bring a movement like this to areas where we’re from. Where it’s mostly Black people, you know what I'm saying? Just bring our movement to our people and spread it out that way.
KT: I was at the panel with (rapper) J.I.D. yesterday, and Ali, and they were talking about accessibility and resources. And I think that's like a common thread, and Dreamville making sure that you spread it out. What’s the impact that giving folks accessibility has on their trajectory in life, from your personal experiences?
Olu: I mean, shoot, accessibility is why we're here now. Because we had accessibility to create the music; we wanted to own our laptops to get our stuff out on the internet. So people like (J. Cole) could hear us, people, like our fan base can hear us. So accessibility kind of shortens that gap that used to be there, especially for people who are dedicated, people, who love what they do. It just makes that gap so much shorter to get from A to Z.
Doctur Dot: Agreed, man. Yeah, accessibility. From the first time somebody ever took us to a studio, that was like giving us tickets to the world. So we try to do as many facets of that as we can to anybody. You've got to keep doing it. You have got to keep going back and giving back.
KT: Last question, what is your hands-on in this project? How have you all contributed?
Olu: We were there from the beginning. We've helped with the garden that we started at Young Middle School (in Atlanta). We're doing a 5k in Atlanta on April 27. And just everything we do, our president is our manager’s wife so it's a family affair. You know, I'm saying we appreciate her dedication and the things that she's brought to the foundation and just from experience.
Doctur Dot: Yeah, make sure you sign up. If you're in Atlanta or the surrounding area, you want to run a 5k for a healthier and cleaner world, EARTHGANG is having a 5K on April 27 in Atlanta.
KT: This is my fan question. How do you guys bring so much authenticity to your music to where you can kind of genre shift and not be confined? Because the new EP is amazing, and it hits my soul in ways that you don’t even know.
Olu: Nah, you just be yourself. Just enjoy life. And you’ve got to be honest from where you are in life right now. Your music should always reflect where you are in life, no matter what anybody says. No matter what the fans say. No matter what the labels say. Because it's your art that you put out to the world. So it should always reflect where you are in your life.
Doctur Dot: You’ve got to approach life - like paintings and sculptures or any other art form - we all approach it the same way. We want to express what we are going through or what we've done with time. And the beats, that's just the paper and that's just the colors we using, and that's just a decoration. But like, at the end of the day you’re going to feel my soul through this s---.
