the age of Odd Future.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\nIn the three-and-a-half years since Earl Sweatshirt\u2019s last album, <\/span>I Don\u2019t Like Shit, I Don\u2019t Go Outside: An Album by Earl Sweatshirt<\/span><\/i>, Earl has been well out of the public eye. He has dropped the occasional single or feature, cancelled tour dates, and experienced the deaths of his father, his uncle, and his dear friend, Mac Miller. At this point, it\u2019s common knowledge that the former Odd Future rapper is troubled. <\/span>I Don\u2019t Like Shit, I Don\u2019t Go Outside <\/span><\/i>was incredibly dark and provided an insight into Earl\u2019s harsh time adjusting to fame as a teenager, dealing with addiction, and issues with friends and family. It spanned just 30 minutes, with many songs featuring extended instrumental outros, creating the impression that the ten tracks could have probably been condensed into a runtime closer to 20 minutes. On his new album, <\/span>Some Rap Songs, <\/span><\/i>Earl has continued to consolidate his songs, with 15 tracks across 25 minutes. The brevity of these tracks is reminiscent of the legendary <\/span>Madvillainy, <\/span><\/i>but much darker. <\/span><\/p>\nThe instrumentals draw inspiration from jazz (samples include the Soul Children and Curtis Mayfield) and the lo-fi beats of J Dilla, and are all quite stellar. \u00a0However great the instrumentals are, it\u2019s the lyrics which stand out most. The lyrics paint a picture of Earl\u2019s personal growth, the media\u2019s misunderstanding of him, and his struggles with addiction: <\/span>\u201cBad acid did damage to my mental \/ Show you right, it took some passages to get grown \/ They been called me savage from the get go,\u201d<\/span><\/i> and Earl\u2019s reflection into his own lonesome state <\/span>\u201cSee the ghost of where I was \/ Lonesome as I was.\u201d<\/span><\/i> These lyrics, paired with Earl\u2019s deadpan delivery hit extremely hard and just listening to this album and reading the lyrics, it\u2019s evident why Earl has been absent in recent years. <\/span><\/p>\nHowever, Earl\u2019s growth as a person can be seen throughout the album. As a teenager, Earl did not have a good relationship with his parents. After releasing his debut mixtape, <\/span>Earl<\/span><\/i>, at just age 16, Earl\u2019s mother sent him to a boarding school for troubled kids and, due to Earl still being a minor, blocked him from releasing any music, leading to the \u201cFree Earl\u201d movement. His father, Keorapetse Kgotsitsile, was a South African poet and activist, and did not live with Earl and his mother in Los Angeles. Earl\u2019s relationship with his parents was poor, but, he has made efforts to improve it. Earl saw the threats and hardships that his mother endured from the \u201cFree Earl\u201d movement, and made efforts to reconcile their relationship. As for his father, he intended this album to help mend their relationship, spending time with him in South Africa. However, Earl\u2019s father passed earlier this year, and never heard the album. \u201cPlaying Possum\u201d features samples from both his parents, a testament to his growth and attempt to mend his relationship with them. <\/span><\/p>\nThis album somehow finds itself being both difficult to listen to, due to its subject matter, and incredibly repeatable and accessible, due to just how great it sounds. Earl continues to be one of the most unique figures in hip-hop, and has further strengthened his already impressive catalogue. Each track on this album sounds like the best pieces of all his previous work, as if this album is the cumulation of \u201cpeak Earl.\u201d He maintains the sharp delivery from his previous work, but comes off as less aggressive and more introspective than before. This is one of my favorite hip-hop albums in recent memory, and is well worth the wait.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cRiot!\u201d, the closing track and one of only two tracks made after his father\u2019s death, closes the album on a happier note. The instrumental track features a brighter sound, and is likely the only moment on the album to improve the listener\u2019s mood. If the tracklist is at all a reflection of Earl\u2019s personal growth over the years, we can leave the album with the hope that Earl is getting better and beginning to lead a happier life.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By John Spaulding This is not the Earl we know from the age of Odd Future. In the three-and-a-half years since Earl Sweatshirt\u2019s last album, I Don\u2019t Like Shit, I Don\u2019t Go Outside: An Album by Earl Sweatshirt, Earl has been well out of the public eye. He has dropped the occasional single or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13221,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1524],"tags":[627,157,26,625,210,31,626,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13221"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3322,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3319\/revisions\/3322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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