Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs Review

December 01, 2018

Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs Review

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