Los Angeles, CA, Jan. 06, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Prime Pizza is kicking off 2026 with heat. The iconic Southern California pizzeria has partnered with Earl Sweatshirt for a limited-edition pizza collab that brings together bold ingredients, LA energy, and one of hip-hop’s most influential voices.
Beginning Friday, January 9, Prime Pizza will debut Heat Check by Earl Sweatshirt, a specialty pizza crafted in collaboration with Earl himself. Available at all Prime Pizza locations while supplies last, Heat Check will be served through January 23. Built for those who like it loud, layered, and spicy, Heat Check features: provolone, grandma sauce, jalapeno, Ezzo beef pepperoni, Bludso’s beef hot link, house made spicy beef sausage and roasted jalapeno-cilantro ranch.
To celebrate the drop, Earl Sweatshirt will host an in-person meet and greet at Prime Pizza’s Fairfax location on Sunday, January 11, starting at 11 AM. Fans can meet Earl, get their Prime Pizza boxes signed, and grab exclusive merch. The limited Prime x Earl Sweatshirt merchandise ($65) will be available at Prime Fairfax only, while supplies last.
Heat Check brings together Earl Sweatshirt’s creative energy and Prime Pizza’s Southern California take on New York–style pizza. This isn’t just a collab, it’s a tribute to Fairfax, where music, fashion, and food collide. More than a limited-edition pie, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime drop.
Founded in Los Angeles in 2014, Prime Pizza has built a loyal following for its authentic New York–style pizza made with top quality ingredients. It all starts with the fundamentals: dough, sauce, cheese, and technique. Each pie begins with dough made fresh daily using King Arthur flour, Grande cheese, Stanislaus tomatoes, and Corto olive oil from Central California.
Guests can expect Prime’s full lineup of round and square pies, including favorites like the Cheese, Pepperoni, and Vodka pies, as well as The Grandma and Spicy Pepperoni square pies. True to a classic New York pizza shop, the menu at many locations also features hot subs and baked pastas like Chicken Parm, Vodka Rigatoni, and the Meatball Parm. Rounding out the offerings are vegan and gluten-free pizza options, garlic knots, salads, and the newly released fan-favorite, Churro Knots, for dessert.
Prime doesn’t chase trends or pile on gimmicky toppings; it focuses on craft, consistency, and balance, the essentials that make a great New York slice. When the team does experiment, it’s done with intention. Over the years, Prime has collaborated on limited time offers with beloved Southern California culinary leaders like Jitlada and Tacos y Birria La Unica, mixing LA flavor with New York pizza fundamentals. The fan-favorite Hawaiian Pie, developed with Bludso’s BBQ, featured pulled pork, shaved pineapple, and a touch of teriyaki, a thoughtful update on a classic that’s evolved into a new permanent part of the menu.
Prime Pizza is growing with the same intention. Fairfax was the original and quickly became a cult favorite. Today, Prime Pizza has locations open in Altadena, Burbank, El Segundo, Little Tokyo (DTLA), Pico–SMC, West LA, Woodland Hills, and Mission Viejo. New locations are coming soon to Brea, Torrance, Northridge, Thousand Oaks, Valley Village, Rancho Cucamonga, and Riverside.
For more information, visit primepizza.com or follow @primepizzala for updates, exclusive offers, and community events.
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ABOUT PRIME PIZZA
Founded in Los Angeles in 2014, Prime Pizza serves authentic New York–style pizza made with California vibes. Every pie starts with dough made fresh daily using King Arthur flour, house made tomato sauce with Stanislaus tomatoes, Grande cheese, and Corto olive oil from Central California. With nine locations across Southern California, Prime Pizza is known for its neighborhood hospitality and focus on pizza fundamentals: dough, sauce, cheese, and technique.
The menu features classic round and square pies including Cheese, Pepperoni, Vodka, The Grandma, and Spicy Pepperoni Square, along with subs, pastas, garlic knots, salads, vegan and gluten-free options, and dessert.
More than a slice shop, Prime Pizza is part of the neighborhood, giving back through local fundraisers, partnerships, and community events that bring people together. Grab a slice, join the neighborhood, and follow along at @primepizzala or primepizza.com.
Earl Sweatshirt and Live Laugh Love:
For over a decade, the rapper Earl Sweatshirt has galvanized fans with his virtuosic storytelling, generous vulnerability, and lyrical gift. A wunderkind that emerged at just 16 from the raw and incendiary Odd Future collective, Earl quickly set himself apart with his dense introspection, off-kilter cadences, and a brooding intellect that belied his youth. Across a number of albums and widespread critical acclaim, Earl has cemented himself as a definitive poet chronicling growth, self-discovery, and the resonant moods of a generation. His live shows embody the intimacy of a cipher with the volume of a stadium, creating a space where fans don’t just listen, they testify.
In 2024, Earl celebrated 10 years since the release of his debut album Doris, a cerebral and emotionally layered record that marked the arrival of a singular voice in hip-hop. With the seminal I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside(2015), he turned inward to reclaim himself. Earl’s 2018 album Some Rap Songs saw him explode traditional form and embrace sonic imperfection, layering thick samples, short verses, and abstract poetics into a textured collage of grief and transformation. Sick! (2022) captured the tumult of the pandemic era with quiet urgency and collaborative contributions from artists and producers like Zelooperz, Nak-el Smith, Armand Hammer, Black Noi$e, and The Alchemist. The 2023 collaborative project with The Alchemist, Voir Dire is a cryptic, soulful self-excavation—marked by murky loops, fragmented memories, and Earl’s signature elliptical lyricism.
His new album, Live Laugh Love, is as thoughtful and surrealist, and embarks on a contemplation of the chaos of existence. A work that began before it began, LLL was initially named in satire and social commentary. What started as a tongue-in-cheek critique of the irony in the phrase developed into a genuine examination of the nostalgia of joy and the simplicity of genuine connection. LLL charts Earl’s path to growth, one that demands a constant wrestling with the past and aspires to return to such moments. “I named it before I wrote it,” he says. “And then everything started clicking.”
With LLL, Earl deepens a long-standing fascination with language, structure, and synchronicity. “Constrictions breed creativity,” he says. “There are rules to reality. It reminds me of Ifá—how spirits operate within that system. I need rules. I need assignments.” For Earl, those rules often begin with a word, a phrase, or a symbol. They give shape to his intuition. Take “Tourmaline”, the title of a track where Earl sing-raps about spiritual protection, love, and his responsibility as a father with hazy, cinematic flair over a looped melancholic melody. It was a word that simply came to him before he knew its spiritual significance. “I had to see why. When I looked it up, it made perfect sense. Tourmaline is a receptive stone. It is celebrated by its ability to inspire enlightenment and balance.”
Across the record on “Gamma (need the Love)”, lyrics reference the late Dave Trugoy (Plug 2) of De La Soul, whose passing Earl says frames the album in its timing and his intentions as an artist—to be self aware and comfortable in his cis black masculinity, but also to be creative, funny, and to strive for greatness. A prophetic line about Roy Ayers follows with uncanny foresight. Tarot imagery—like the Eight of Cups—entered his writing before he consciously understood its spiritual meaning, only to find later that the card’s symbolism carried his intended message: the importance of walking away from what’s no longer serving you, moving on, and being grounded in the mundane. “That’s what growth is,” he reflects. “You can get woo-woo and heady about things, but you still have to change diapers.”
This is the tension Earl thrives in: the poetic and the practical, the sacred and the routine, the heavy and the hilarious. LLL reflects on the alchemy of those layers as an album steeped in allegory but rooted in an artist’s everyday life (the track “INFATUATION”, a love letter to food, chronicles the very real challenge of obtaining sustenance while on tour). This careful balancing act manifests as deceptively effortless, off-the-dome delivery. And yet, his true process is one of endurance and consistency: “If I’m not putting in military hours, sleeping at the studio, waking up at 6:45 and rapping, then making beats all day, and then rapping again at night, and then doing that for four days, then I feel like I’m really behind,” he admits.
Earl’s intensity isn’t about ego. It’s about legacy and contribution. “Music is the thing I’m the most leave it cleaner than you found it about,” he explains. He’s critical of the complacency that can come with success: the yes-men, the perks, the comfort. “If you’re not hard on yourself as an established artist, it atrophies you. If you’re not resilient about the playof this shit—the core essence—your art becomes what it is: widely accepted but not challenging.”
Standout track “CRISCO” embodies the balance he’s constantly navigating. It starts out with the energy of a Saturday night before landing in a moment of sobering Sunday morning vulnerability. “It’s the most human verse I’ve written,” he says, reflecting on lines like, “I got the failure beaten out of me. It wasn’t even an option.” This honesty cuts through the album’s dream logic, giving listeners not just a window into Earl’s mind but also into the context that surrounds his life lessons.
The end result of Earl’s latest work is a prophetic, spiritually guided, and celebratory exploration of narrative as a means of surviving life’s confusions, constraints, and change. As the music came, so did signs that Earl was channeling something beyond himself. LLL reflects both a profound inner shift and is also a generous snapshot and meditative processing of where Earl is now: a father, an artist in his 30s, and a person who has spent half of his life making art in public. LLL boldly confirms Earl’s evolution without fanfare—it is steady, palpable growth that marks the joy in embracing the journey, however imperfect. For more info on Earl’s album follow @earlsweatshirts and https://earlsweatshirt.lnk.to/LLL.
- Earl Sweatshirt
- Earl Sweatshirt