Underground rappers Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE restart their “Home on the Range” tour for their Surf Gang-produced double album “POMPEII // UTILITY” Sept. 30 at the Riverside Municipal Auditorium. Sweatshirt and MIKE return after several postponed shows, including the original June date for this Riverside show.
The historic Riverside Municipal Auditorium had a line down the street outside of the venue, with several fans waiting in anticipation to see their favorite artists perform close to home.
“It’s nice to see big artists come back to the city,” concert attendee Alexander Hernandez said. “Riverside used to have a really big music scene, and it’s kind of died out.”
The show was kicked off with an opening set from longtime friend of Sweatshirt and professional skateboarder Na-Kel Smith, who played high-energy, heavy bass songs off his albums “NAK” and “FREE POPS FR.”
Smith had the first of several callouts and references to Riverside and the Inland Empire, singing Pak Joko’s song “IE IE” and having the crowd sing the chorus back to him before ending his set.
Smith was followed by an ambient and hip-hop-focused DJ set by Surf Gang member and producer of the album, Harrison, which included several songs from friends of Sweatshirt and MIKE like Niontay and Sideshow.
The DJ set transitioned into a small set by RockitNeedSpace, promoting his debut album “Next Day Air,” which was released Oct. 2. RockitNeedSpace is one of the only two artists signed to Sweatshirt’s label, Tan Cressida.
This was RockitNeedSpace’s first performance as a signed artist, and he described it backstage as a “crazy, full-circle moment” being able to have it in Riverside because he spent time growing up in Moreno Valley.
After a short break in between the sets, MIKE and Sweatshirt took the stage coming through a see-through house-style prop to “Home on the Range” by Gene Autry, a nod to their tour title and a song from Sweatshirt’s side of the album.
Sweatshirt was the first of the two to perform, starting with the first track off his song “this2shallpass,” which was met with a loud eruption from the crowd.
MIKE followed up Sweatshirt with his first song of the night, “BACK-HOME.” After the song finished, they took a moment to ask the crowd how they were feeling, which was met by shrieks of joy and laughter from the crowd.
The pattern of Sweatshirt and MIKE performing one song each off of their side of the album and bouncing off of each other continued throughout the night, with high points coming during their most well-known songs or the songs where they featured each other.
The first of these moments was when MIKE performed “Minty,” which the crowd knew and sang word for word, with the loudest and most enthusiastic part being “take your talents off to LinkedIn,” where MIKE’s DJ cut the track off and let the crowd finish his lyrics.
The next one of these moments came when MIKE played the first song not on their collab album, a solo song titled “Da Roc” from his 2025 album “Showbiz,” and the crowd had a surprised but ecstatic response.
Right before the halfway point of the show, Sweatshirt started including the crowd, repeating an ad-libbed “ugh” after each of his lines on his song “rectangle lens” until the crowd repeated it back to him louder after each line.
This was followed up by a small section of both Sweatshirt and MIKE performing songs off of their individual catalogs.
During this section, MIKE introduced a recurring bit where he wanted the crowd to make as much noise as possible every time he threw his arms in the air. It became a fan-favorite act toward the end of the show.
In the last third of the show came a fan-favorite moment where MIKE and Sweatshirt started having a dance-off and were encouraging the crowd to dance instead of creating a mosh pit.
“I told you one of the main things going on in Riverside is the dance community,” Sweatshirt said to MIKE.
This led to all of Sweatshirt’s and MIKE’s friends coming on the stage dancing and having fun alongside them. One of them was label signee and artist Cletus Strap, who was handed the microphone and performed his two singles off his debut album “Rapper’s Suck.”
Strap got to the edge of the stage rapping and hugging Sweatshirt during their song “Nonchalant,” which was his first time performing it after being signed to Sweatshirt. After the show, Strap said performing in Riverside was extremely fun and he had an amazing time with the crowd.
After this, MIKE continued performing and wanted the crowd to sing along with him, jokingly saying he was nervous because it was his first time in Riverside. He gave instructions on when to sing and got the crowd to harmonize with him during his song “Burning Desire.”
The show came to what seemed like the end with Sweatshirt saying the police have arrived (they hadn’t). He asked the crowd to give a round of applause to all of the artists who performed, the event staff, security and bartenders.
The crowd met this with a chant for an encore. After a couple of minutes of the chant, MIKE came back out and said that because it was his first time performing in Riverside and he had so much fun, he’d perform a few more songs. After this, Sweatshirt came back out and performed two more songs, then said a final goodbye to the crowd and thanked them for a fun time.
“It’s really dope to see them in Riverside, if you were in LA, you’d see them more often,” Jay Joseph, concert attendee, said. “This type of music doesn’t really reach this side of town, so it’s important.”
