Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs Review + an old college essay about earl from 2013

Earl Sweatshirt is no stranger for toeing the fringes of contemporary rap. In 2012 the elusive and mysterious rapper found himself at the focal point of the hip hop collective Odd Future. Releasing his debut mixtape in 2011, abruptly titled “Earl”, we found the rapper pushing expressive extremes through portrayal of a violent and antagonistic attention grabbing lyrics. Limited to a mere 25 minute run time, “Earl” would solidify the youthful artist’s forthcoming tendency for brief project endeavors. Shortly following the release of “Earl”, the then 15 year old lyrical prodigy was whisked away by his mother to a reclusive residential program in the parish of Samoa. With the burgeoning popularization of the Odd Future collective, Earl found himself the focus of an internet meme through Tyler the Creator’s insistent tagline “Free Earl”. This tagline would go on to become a staple during the early years of the young collective, building to the climax of Earl’s eventual return from Samoa in 2012. However, the “Free Earl” movement did not come without is misdoings. Earl’s mother soon became the subject of harassment by fans of the group, and the newfound spotlight on the artist would go on to ignite a disdain for his struggles with stardom.The rappers subsequent return would see celebration amongst fans and Odd Future alike. Being dubbed lyrical prodigy, Earl would then go on to carve his own lane after a brief pairing with OF and its eventual dissolution

Following Earls return we saw the rapper distance himself from the early shock value of his mixtape “Earl”, as the rapper quickly came to understand that violent content would only take him so far.  2013 would see the release of the much anticipated debut studio album “Doris”, proving to the world that he was more than a one trick pony. The album would garner high praise and applaud his signature use of elaborate rhyme schemes, double entendres, atypical production, and the newfound style of a more personal, and visceral lyrical content. The album would still feature the rappers stapled motifs of emotional and morose subject matter, but would set him apart from his previous work with a more mature and stable tone.

 Following a 2 year hiatus after the release of “Doris”, Earl released his second studio album aptly titled “I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside: An Album By Earl Sweatshirt”. This project would further the rappers decent into brooding and dark subject matter. Taking on an often times lugubrious and monotone vocal inflection, the project would take on an air of hopelessness and deep self awareness. With a 29 minute run time, Earl showed the world that he was not only a lyrical mastermind, but also a blossoming producer displaying avant-garde production, the likes of which mirrored the nature of MF DOOM. The album would feature almost exclusively self produced beats, and would announce to the world that bare bones and hollow production can be used to great effect, complimenting and reflecting Earls barren and defunct mental state.

          Shortly after the release of “I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside: An Album By Earl Sweatshirt”, Earl would go on to drop a short 10 minute EP entitled “Solace”. This project would further push the gloomy and tortured content of previous released projects to new extremes. An echo of dwindling happiness would consume the project and announce to the world the Earl is a troubled young mind.  

After another hiatus, this time lasting 3 years, the distressed rapper would release his third studio album “Some Rap Songs”. This project is riddled with a calloused clarity, filtered through the murky dissonance of a new style of hip hop. During the 3 year hiatus following “Solace”, Earl would find himself hanging around and gathering strong influence from the New York underground scene. Drawing from the scenes artists, Earl would go on to collaborate and adopt the style of NY artists such as MIKE, Sixpress, Medhane, and Navy Blue. Following several family losses, and the death of rapper Mac Miller, Earls third studio album, abruptly titled “Some Rap Songs”, would quickly become Earl’s most personal and abrasively honest musical endeavor; It would even go so far as to feature a track with vocal excerpts from expressing his mothers thanks and love for her family, which was simultaneously gently interwoven with a spoken poem by the rappers now deceased father. With a succinct run time of 24 minutes, Earl would go on to express a series of sobering self revelations with meticulousness unparalleled in his previous works. The projects first track titled “Shattered Dreams”, immediately starts off with the vocal excerpt stating “imprecise word”, spoken by the social critic James Baldwin. Lifted from a lecture at a New York Community Church, broadcasted in 1962, the full quote from the excerpt states,

 “I really don’t like words like ‘artist’, or ‘integrity’, or ‘courage’, or ‘ability.’ I have a kind of distrust for those words because I don’t really know what those words mean… anymore than I really know such words as ‘democracy’, or ‘peace, or ‘peace-loving’, or ‘war-like’ or ‘integration’ mean. And yet, once compelled to recognize that all these imprecise words are kind of a tense made by us all to get to something which is real and which lives behind the word […] I suppose the only word for me when the chips are down, is that I am an ‘artist.’”.

This quote sets the album off with a precise understanding of the artists struggle with pressures to release music and be the full fledged prodigal artist that his fan base so heavily associates him with. “Shattered Dreams” would set the tone of the album with a lucid tone of transparency and a self aware understanding of Earls past and current experiences. With the initial self produced track looping soulful vocal a sample as the focus of the beat, you find the song lulling the listener into a sense of deep melancholy, expertly crafting a world and tone for the album that finds us floating through an airy dream state in a world flooded with introspection. In this track we find Earl dictating several things as he says,

“Back off, stand-offish and anemic
Yeah, my nigga Ish, told him it’s a feelin’
Blast off, buckshot into my ceilin'
Why ain't nobody tell me I was bleedin'?
Please, nobody pinch me out this dream”

 Here the rapper establishes several forthcoming things paired with the general tone of the album, Earl is explaining his mismanaged state of mind, and confusion for no one around him to help him understand that he was struggling more than he previously understood. The line “Please, nobody pinch me out this dream” expertly conveys the mind state of a depressed soul used to the status quo of self induced despair. The line also reflects a lack of interest in being pulled out from within oneself, and into the sobering reality of a world paired with a healthy mind state. On the track fittingly titled “Red Water”, we find Earl further pushing the theme of a dream state, and his difficulty in not only having the desire to not wake up from a dream, but also his habit of forgetting dreams that he has paired with his negative life experiences. Earl states,

“Gotta keep it brief
Locked and load, I can see you lyin’ through your teeth
Fingers on my soul, this is 23
Blood in the water, I was walkin’ in my sleep
Blood on my father, I forgot another dream
I was playin’ with the magic, hide blessings in my sleeve
Yeah, I know I’m a king, stork on my shoulder, I was sinkin”

The lyrics reflect the brief and direct nature of his content for the entirety of the album, but also reflect the cold actuality of being 23. In the line, “the blood in the water, I was walkin’ in my sleep”, we see that the blood in the water refers to previously self inflicted metaphorical wounds that have been eating away at Earls hardened mind state. Again fitting with the motif of dream states and unwillingness to wake, we have earl saying “Blood on my father, I forgot another dream”, to which he speaks on the past transgressions between him and his father with the mention of “blood on my father”. The “I forgot another dream” speaks to the forgotten past of his relationship with his dad, and the moving onward towards a shifting perspective on how he handled a relationship with his father. Red Water is another self produced track that features these upwardly spiraling vocal samples and a simple snare drum kick, both of which serve to add an air of slow intensity that grips the listener with the tracks decisions to be simple and direct. The album is not without witty bars that serve as a subutle assault on his contemporaries, Cold Summers sees Earl take Jabs at his fellow rappers,

“We got the juice, niggas corny as shit
We on the loose, niggas know what it is
We makin' moves, niggas corny as shit
We got the juice, niggas know what it is
Yeah”

Here we have an indirect reference to the artist Juicewrld and how his approaches on sadness and misery in his music and its overly corny nature of execution. Juicewrld has a fetishized take on depression, and uses it as an aesthetic to capitalize on the now widely popular genre of emo rap. This line is akin to Earl’s previous statement on artists like Post Malone and the likes. With the track December 24^th, we see a more racial focused take on this project. The opening of the song sees Earl displaying his affinity for the underground scene of NY with a sample of a sample from the MIKE song “Why I’m Here”,

“It is surely time that the speech of the Black culture of America be recognized as a genuine dialect of English. It is in every sense of the word…”

The sample is a fairly self evident statement that Black speech be recognized as a “genuine dialect of English”, and sets the tone for a strong look into Earls self, his race, and his recent misdoings. December 24^th sees Earl express everything from his deceased grandmother’s alcoholism as he says “Member when they had my grandmammy on a drip drink How much of that gin straight? Could have filled a fish tank”, down to memories of how “bad” acid warped his mind state.

          All in all Earl Sweatshirt's third studio album sees the artist infuse his sound with the genre bending underground sonics coming out of New York rap scene, where artists like MIKE, Hedane, and Navy Blue take avant-garde jazz and pair it with slow, distinct bars, monotone vocal inflections, and multisyllabic couplets. With songs featuring a very heavy interest in looping harrowing vocal samples, “Some Rap Songs” sweeps its range of sampling from everything to the popular blaxploitation revival film “Black Dynamite”, to the metalik funk band Mighty Flames, and their song “Road Man”. “Some Rap Songs” is a short and ambitious experimental album from a mainstream artist, who shines uniquely in the sea of generic over bloated projects. A trend of bloated projects has recently blossomed in an attempt by artists to game the streaming system, in which they aim to get as much content released on their platforms in order to generate the most money from streams. This heavy focus on quantity over quality has become a norm with many mainstream artists in the rap scene. As previously learned this year through Kanyes “surgical summer” releases, a 20 minute album can be used to say a lot more than something like an 89 minute project like Drake “Scorpion” in which Drake says nothing of much substance. Earl is no stranger to toeing the line of convention, he continues to succeed in evolving his sound beyond things that the general public expect, while also managing to shed some light on the abstract and experimental sounds of the New York underground scene.

9/10

Mentioned Tracks

Shattered Dreams

Red Waters

Cold Summers

December 24th

Thebe Kgositsile

Hardcore hip hop is a sub-genre of hip hop music which began in the 1980s along the east coast. It was mainly known for its angry and aggressive sound as well as its confrontational tone. It was often paired with minimalistic beats and piano samplings, which was pioneered by wu tang clan in the 1990s. Gangsta rap became synonymous with hardcore rap in the early 1990s, and this is where Thebe Kgositsile comes in. Formally known as Earl Sweatshirt, he is a young member of the alternative hip hop group Odd Future. Earl was born February 24, 1994 he is one of the youngest member of Odd Future. He self released his first album, Earl, on March 31, 2010. Complex Magazine called it the 24th best album of 2010. Earl was released as a free digital download on the OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All) tumblr through a link to a website. A hip hop collective known for chanting “kill people burn shit fuck school”, “Free Earl”, and “Fuck Steve Harvey”. They were commonly referred to by themselves and others as loiter squad, wolf gang, and golf wang. They were heavily marketed through internet blogs and twitter; they even have a few disputes with several bloggers. 

Earl's style is noted for its dark lyrical content, heavy wordplay, multi-syllabic rhymes, and double entendres; this is what I believe allows him to also slide into being part of the alternative hip hop genre along with gangsta rap and hardcore rap. The production of his album which was done by fellow “Wolf” Tyler the Creator and his mixture of sounds in his productions fit perfectly into the alternative genre.

 Earl was sent away to at Samoa's Coral Reef Academy, which was a behavioral facility for ailed teens. Earl’s music was no longer legally allowed to be distrusted due to his mother legally baring it. This result in the track “Lama” on Tyler the Creators Goblin was not released as well as the track “chordaroy” was not rereleased with mellowhypes BLACKENEDWHITE’s physical release.  US law would allow earl to legally be an adult and to alienate him from his mother and continue to pursue a career in music, but if he remains in Samoa the Samoan laws state that one is legally an adult at the age of 21. The Chanting and the phrase FREE EARL was coined by Tyler the Creator and has been chanted at shows and in songs led to fans off the rap group attack earls family. The New Yorker got in contact with Earl’s mother, a teacher who continues to ask to remain anonymous and stated to the New Yorker that she wished to be anonymous because she claimed to “fear for her security. (Many Odd Future fans have cast her as a villain, castigating her for unjustly exiling her son.)”. The New Yorker reported that “Earl’s mother agreed to transmit some written questions to her son, and to convey his answers. As the article noted, “the circumstances of this exchange surely influenced the tone or content of his replies.” On the question of his confinement, he wrote, “Please listen: I’m not being held against my will.” He described his time away from Los Angeles in terms of therapy, not punishment, and asked fans and group members alike for “space.””, but there are no actual sources that have actually talked to Earl himself Only a fellow Samoan friend has been interviewed and messages passed through his mother to the media were given no possible factual information was given. He remains a real mystery for the time being leaving no way to know when he will return if he returns. Tyler the Creator claims Earl as his brother but he is not they grew up together and went through similar parental hardships. Earl’s father is famous South African poet and political activist Keorapetse Kgositsile. His father is a dean of contemporary South African literature. 

His style of heavy word play and raw style is displayed masterfully in his song entitled “Earl” “Yo, I'm a hot and bothered astronaut. Crashing while jacking off to buffering vids of Asher Roth eattin' apple sauce. Sent to Earth to poke Catholics in the ass with saws, and knock blunt ashes into their caskets and laugh it off. Twisted sicker than mad cattle in fact I'm off six different liquors with a Prince wig plastered on. Stop screamin', bitch, you shouldn't be that alarmed. When Big Lips is in the Attic Arms with an addicts arm. Earl puts the 'ass' in "assassin." Puts the pieces of decomposing bodies in plastic. Puts 'em in a pan and mixes it up with scat. Then gobbles it like fat black bitches and catfish. It so happens that I'm so hap hazardous. I'll puke a piece and put it on a hook and fucking cast the shit. I'm asking that you faggot rap actors take action. And get a hall pass from this class-act shit. How the fuck I fit a axe in a satchel? Slip capsules in the glass, you dizzy rascal. Party staff baffled, asking where her ass go. In my room redefining the meaning of black holes. Before I suck it up. But hurry, I got nuts to bust, and butts to fuck, and ups to shut, and sluts to fucking uppercut. It's OF, buttercup, go ahead, fuck with us. Without a doubt, a sure-fire way to get your mother fucked. Asked for a couple bucks. Shove a trumpet up her butt. Play a song, invade her thong. My dick is having guts for lunch, as well as supper, then I rummage through her ruptured cunt. Found the mustard. Fuckin' nosey neighbors notice something's up. "Whatcha doin'?" Nothin' much. Would shout some other stuff. Gotta fucking bounce.  Guess the bouncers had enough of us.”. That song was paired with a colorful video of a group of teenagers mixing several drugs and drinks and suffering from side effect which in turn kill all of them throughout the song. 

Complex magazine claimed it to be the 24th best album of 2010 and went on to say “No one knows exactly where Earl is. Boot camp? Boarding school? Who knows? His Odd Future crew sure isn’t giving any clues to his whereabouts. So until the California native returns, he’s left us with a short, but entertaining album where he morbidly raps about choking women, rocking swastikas on his letterman jacket, and being a rapist in training. It’s a little bit disturbing that a 16-year-old has these kinds of thoughts, but who gives a shit when he articulates them so well. Fuck Steve Harvey!”. Earl is indeed a mixture of gangster rap, hardcore rap, alternative  hip hop he is influenced by other members of OFWGKTA with Tyler the Creators alternative methods and Hodgy Beats and mellowhypes perfect blend of gangsta rap and hardcore rap. One of my personal favorite lines and what I find to be quite clever is “Last straw, fuck that, I'm who broke the camel's back” as well as “The Odd nigga with a spoon in your danimals

As hungry as a cannibal, trapped in a van of cantaloupes” both are from the song “Pigeons”. In the song Luper Earl displays a strong desire for an unnamed girl and he expression extreme emotions  over the situation in the second verse, “Maybe if you looked in this direction I'd pick my heart up off the floor and put it in my chest then feel the fucking life, rushing through my body

But you got a guy, it's not me, so my wrist is looking sloppy Come on, let's cut the bull like a matador

You light me up like lamps a chance is all I'm really asking for give me one, I promise I'll be back for more

Most wanna tap and score, I want a fam of four not like a family of four, just like... fuck it you'll never listen to this shit anyways, fuck you, bitch”.

Earl's dark lyrical content, heavy wordplay, multi-syllabic rhymes, and double entendres; allows him be part of the alternative hip hop genre along with gangsta rap and hardcore rap. He and the alternative rap collective OFWGKTA are rapidly gaining mainstream popularity. Earl Sweatshirt just needs to come out of hiding soon and they take everything by storm.

Works Cited

Ahmed, Insanul. "The 25 Best Albums Of 2010 | Complex." Complex | Style, Music, Sneakers, Entertainment, Girls, Technology. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2011. <http://www.complex.com/music/2010/12/the-25-best-albums-of-2010/earl-sweatshirt-earl>.

"Earl Sweatshirt - EARL (album review) | Sputnikmusic." Sputnikmusic - Your Music Reviews, News, and Discussion. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2011. <http://www.sputnikmusic.com/review/38774/Earl-Sweatshirt-EARL/>.

"Earl Sweatshirt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_Sweatshirt>.

"Lyrics Mania." Lyrics Mania. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2011. <http://www.lyricsmania.com/luper_lyrics_earl_sweatshirt.html>.

"Mystery solved: Earl Sweatshirt, his mother and his poet-father communicate with the New Yorker  - latimes.com." Blogs - latimes.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2011. <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/05/mystery-solved-earl-sweatshirt-his-mother-and-his-poet-father-communicate-with-the-new-yorker-.html>.

"News Desk: How’s Earl? : The New Yorker."  The New Yorker. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2011. <http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/06/earl-sweatshirt-update.html>.

"The story of Odd Future's Earl Sweatshirt gets another knot - latimes.com." Blogs - latimes.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2011. <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/music_blog/2011/06/the-story-of-odd-future-earl-sweatshirt-gets-another-knot.html>.

continent. "Alternative hip hop - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_hip_hop>.

continent. "Alternative hip hop - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_hip_hop>.

MLA formatting by BibMe.org.