Earl Sweatshirt is moving his music into the future at the perfect speed: a lagging creep that forces listeners to slow down and swallow every word. His rhymes are as slow as molasses, but without an ounce of sweetness, stripped of sugar and drenched in acid. The psychedelic feel of his backing instrumentation balances out the raw intensity of his rhymes and, on the whole, Earl Sweatshirt composes a layered, complex and demanding album.
Sampling guitar pieces from the '60s and video game sound effects, Earl is playing with the construction of his songs on his sophomore LP, "I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside." Many of his tracks finish their lyrics about a minute before their conclusion, leaving significant time for listeners to take in guitars, pianos and pleasant melodies that feel cloying next to the harshness of Earl’s rhymes.
On his newest album, Earl continues to perpetuate his persona, one of a genius in hermitude, a member of the exclusive L.A.-based rap clique Odd Future and someone who seems so bored of everything around him that he’s alternating between just messing with listeners and pouring out his soul so profusely that one needs a bucket to catch all the pieces. Combining hazy beats with lines about drug addictions and paranoia, the album can, at times, feel like a trip -- not lacking in quality content, but intensely full of pondering about the morose state in which Earl now seems to exist in his songs. For the 21-year-old rapper born Thebe Neruda Kgositsile, the persona feels part-joke and part-truth -- a composite that ebbs through the entirety of the album. Playfulness and seriousness collide, and what is left is the strange and hauntingly unique construction that is Earl. It’s an odd balance between baring his emotions and acting like he’s too cool to feel anything, but the winding instrumentation hits that nonchalance while his rhymes work wonders to dig up an emotional undercurrent.
“Huey” begins with a carnival-esque musicality, an electric keyboard to sound off in a major key to announce the return of a rapper who very frequently finds himself hitting notes with equal parts sentimentality and calculated indifference. At 1:52, the track is brief and highlights how “I’m like quicksand in my ways,” with that turtle speed of rapping that Earl is known for. The track is an easy introduction to an album that packs a significant punch. Almost deceptive in its ease, even lyrics like “I spent the day drinking and missing my grandmother / Just grab a glass and pour up some cold white wine” don’t do much to stir up an air of aggression. It’s as easy as listening to Frank Ocean’s “Super Rich Kids” (2012), on which Earl provided the rap hook.
On “Mantra,” though, it’s almost as though listeners are hearing another rapper entirely, one who spits at a deeper octave and who isn’t picking at scabs but ripping off band-aids. His voice is deep and moving at clip-speed, nearly tripping over words as they come at listeners so fast it’s impossible to pick one lyric from another.
At 10 songs, the album clocks in at just under 30 minutes. It’s hard-hitting, but so slow that more time would feel excessive. The album’s length is perfect for the high concentration of loaded content that demands time to digest. Earl raps at half speed with a pacing that often feels lazy before he pulls up on the reigns and reels everything into one tightly compact and nicely tied package. It’s evident that Earl Sweatshirt has fine-tuned a style entirely his own with the ease and grace of a yo-yo player, throwing out rhymes and snatching them back with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flair.
“Faucet” is soporifically slow, with a backing drumbeat that begs an increase in tempo and lyrics like “Washing away with the water / I’m a land mammal staying away from the altar” that sound as though Earl is just barely containing his emotion. Yet the track slinks along with a soft touch.
“Grief,” the single released on March 17 to announce the release of the album, harkens back to the Earl of “Doris” (2013), the game-changing LP that put the trailblazing rapper into the limelight of hip-hop. “Grief” combines Earl’s introspective and aggressive lyrics at a crawling speed. An electric guitar comes in, seemingly out of nowhere to provide an outro with an early '60s vibe. The track then bleeds into “Off Top,” with a looping backing track of a few sparse piano keys and the sound of a glock revolving to reload serving as a quasi-drumbeat.
“AM // Radio,” featuring Wiki, combines a stringed harmonization with lyrics like “tally the corpses.” The juxtaposition is striking and off-putting. Did he just really pair “Brick out on the tour, got kicked out of the morgue” with a hippie Hendrix-like guitar backing? Yes, and the genius is that there just isn’t any other combination that would work there.
Listeners looking for a banger album will not find it here. What they will find is pure artistry: slow, at times seductive, but mostly demanding and oozing with painful introspection, fighting a balance between forced seclusion and cohabitation. There is nothing hidden on this album, and while it lasts a mere half hour, the LP is a whirlwind.
