Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs

Earl Sweatshirt, musical pseudonym of Thebe Kgositsile, Rap's dreariest and most tortured soul ladies and gentlemen!  Ever since I first heard of Earl years ago, he's fascinated me on numerous levels.  Exhibit A, his infamous 2010 "EARL" Mixtape.  This album is a rough listen, for numerous reasons.  Earl's performance on this tape is absolutely 100% psychotic.  Earl here describes himself as a teenager who casually fantasizes about rape and murdering police officers, often in disturbing detail.  That, alongside horrifically deformed beats and distorted production, made for a chilling EP.  Did I mention Earl was like 16 when he recorded this?   It's a brutal EP, but like movies like "A Clockwork Orange", it's such a trainwreck that I can never stop listening to it.  Hell, it's actually one of my favorite Tapes of the last 10 years.   We all know what happened next.  Earl got sent away for a while, which lead to the "Free Earl" movement.  But when he returned in 2013 with "Doris", Earl was a different person.  He wasn't some twisted teen with murder in his eyes, a fascination with rape and an upside down cross burned into his forehead.  No, he was a dreary-eyed depressed teen with absolutely loads of baggage.  It's an emotionally dense album that goes into Earl's depression and loneliness, and his dealings with fame.  We get dreary beats, and a ton of fantastic features from Odd Future buddies Tyler The Creator and Frank Ocean, as well as longtime collaborators like Casey Veggies and a young Vince Staples. It's not what any of us expected to hear, but it's absolutely worth the hype.  And 2015's "I Don't Like Shit I Don't Go Outside", honestly maybe even better.  This is a deeply depressive, borderline psychotic album that has Earl coming off more human than ever.   Psychosis, addiction, loneliness, anxiety, fame, Early deals with it all here and is so candid about it all.  And between all of that, the beats are so minimal, and the production is near-suffocating.  Earl comes off like a hermit here who hasn't left his house in months, and the small list of guests come off more like friends who have stopped by to make sure Earl is still alive.  It's a dense, hard to place album but it's fucking awesome.  So here we are, out of nowhere with a brand new Earl project.  And honestly, he's sounding more words and abstract than ever, let's talk boys and girls!

This album starts off with ‘Shattered Dreams’, and this shit isn’t wasting a single second.  Right off the bat, we get this absolutely ghoulish small and a dreary performance from Earl.  Like, it’s actually pretty chilling and absolutely reminiscent of what we’ve seen from Earl in the past.  It’s just so visual, and reminds me so much of like, the incredibly paranoid feel of Danny Brown’s “Atrocity Exhibition”.  Like, Earl sounds like he hasn’t left his house in weeks.  He’s practically slurring his words yet he sounds skilled as ever.  It’s a chilling, terrifying performance but it stops you in your tracks and really makes you analyze everything.  Earl is just so talented.  Now, with ‘Red Water’ it just becomes so obvious that Earl is really REALLY ahead of the curve.  I love just how abstract and all over the place, this beat is.  Half of the time, I feel like the production here is just morphing in front of us.  Somehow though it doesn’t come off messy, it comes off genuinely wild.  Earl’s performance here is absolutely chilling, bringing in these violent images as well as personal stories.  It’s visceral and incredibly real, and absolutely vicious.  Up next, ’Cold Summers’ is absolutely wild.  The jazzy beat is something out of the book of Madlib.  But not in the way where it comes off as a ripoff or an imitation, more like if Earl was his student.  It’s a constantly morphing, colorful beat mixed with sights and sounds that sometimes come off familiar.  And it’s absolutely nuts, to be honest.  Earl’s delivery here is so much more upfront and aggressive, and this one has Earl diving into past friendships.  He continues to come off so paranoid, so lonely, it’s so powerful and it excited the hell out of me.  on the other hand, ‘Nowhere2go’ is so much more suffocating and encapsulating, sort of like some of the material from his “I Don’t Like Shit…” album.  Earl’s performance is dreary, twisted and honestly gloomy.  But in his performance, he comes off legitimately emotional and bent out of shape, mostly because we know Earl is just like that.  We have Earl once again going deeply into friendships, which is really curious.  It just makes Earl come off even more like an agoraphobiac and it’s just where I want to hear him.  It’s cutting, dreamy, and the sort of left hook I needed in rap.  Now, this is a constantly shifting album, so you need to keep that in mind.  ‘December 24’ has a glitchy beat and Earl’s much more upfront performance here.  Like, he doesn’t sound like some gloomy teen anymore, he sounds much fiercer and aggressive.  And honestly, that alone knocks this out of the park.  But like, come on.  How good is this album  To an extent, I get this feeling that this some weird, spiritual successor to “Madvilliany”.  It’s not a cheap imitation, this is all skill.
This album rolls on with ‘Ontheway!’ featuring Standing On The Corner.  Now, honestly, of all of the beats here so far this one doesn’t hit me as hard.  This one samples some of the same tracks that J Dilla sampled on his legendary “Donuts” album.  Earl though drops some pretty solid bars here with just the right amount of pop culture references.  This one is a sort of low point though if you even want to call it that.  ‘The Mint’ featuring Navy Blue continues on with this very dreary and dreamy sound.  Some of the samples Earl is using seem so out there and deep, I have no idea where the hell all of this is even coming from.  These tracks are so syrupy and just come off like they’re in slow motion or something.  But it ends up adding to this very claustrophobic sound.  I love this one, I love Earl’s very in-your-face performance and the very eerie sound to all of this.  Honestly, this is all gravy, it’s even hypnotic in points.  A lot of these beats continue to come off so classy and so adventurous with ‘The Bends’.  I love his rapid-fire verses here and how Earl just keeps things ripping one line after another.  Now, I sort of wish this one was maybe a little more visceral and visual.  But Earl is an absolute wizard so far and is sounding impeccable.  But “Loosie” pushes back in the right direction with this absolutely terrifying beat that’s constantly morphing and moving and Earl sounds like a damn serial killer on top of it.  It’s less than a minute, but Earl sounds so impressive.  On the other hand, ‘Azucar’ has almost a soaring feel to it with a much less claustrophobic beat.  It’s almost joyous even though clearly Earl takes things down several notches with another very gloomy verse  I love just how personal this continues to be a lot, Earl doesn’t sugarcoat anything.  These are rap tunes that demand numerous listens, dissection, dictionaries, and attention.
By this point, it’s obvious that Earl has absolutely deformed the modern Rap beat, to the point where they are absolute shadows of themselves.  It’s a smooth track, and at one point this beat was probably jolly and full of life.  But Earl, between twisting and turning this beat and his morbidly depressing verse makes this an Earl classic.  Like, you may even have to pause some of these tunes to take it all in.  Cause guess what, there’s a TON to take in, but it’s just so rewarding.  ‘Veins’ continues to make this album absolutely perplexing to keep up with.  I feel like I have to unravel Earl’s metaphors and wordplay, constantly engaging me amongst this slow-motion beat.  It’s bruised, and it’s far from easy to take in.  But it’s the most personal thing we’ve ever gotten from Early which is really saying so much.  And then there's the short interlude ‘Playing Possum’, featuring Cheryl Harris & Keorapetse Kgositsile, AKA Earl’s parents.  And let me just say this, from a guy who's been slowly unraveling himself to us for like, 6 years now, this is next level.  It’s a short interlude, but it’s powerful.  Now, honestly, of all of the tracks here, “Peanut” is absolutely my least favorite.  I’m sorry, but Earl practically rapping over a drone just isn’t what I wanted to hear.  Yes, it’s freakish and twisted, but this isn’t for me.  But ‘Riot!’ ends off things on a genuinely left-field note, and that’s saying something for this album.  I love the joyous guitar that’s all slowed down and dreary.  And yea, it’s just an ending instrumental, but it’s one of the more perfect ending credits sequences I’ve heard all year. 

Rating: 9.0/10

Give A Listen To: ‘Red Water’, ‘Nowhere2go’, “Azucar”, “Veins”

Least Favorite Track: “Peanut”

Genre: Experimental Rap / Abstract Rap / Psychedelic Rap / Alternative Rap

Overall Thoughts:  Rap’s dreariest, loneliest soul returns after 3 years with a mind-altering, staggeringly experimental album.  “Some Rap Songs” is much more than just some rap songs thrown together.  This is the culmination of every sound that Earl has ever worked with.  The jazzy rap nods of his Sly Tendencies days, the horrific alternate dimension that was his "EARL" mixtape, the emotional and somber tones of “Doris" and the agoraphobia and paranoia that plagued “I Don’t Like Shit…”.  Earl is an absolute megastar.  His flows are stunning, his ideas are forward thinking, the beats are wild, shit I had to keep pausing this album just to take it all in.  It’s a true appreciation of albums like “Madvillainy” and “Donuts” while marching bravely towards the future and becoming more human than ever.  Absolutely stunning.