Earl Sweatshirt: Album Review
https://djbooth.net/features/2019-11-29-earl-sweatshirt-some-rap-songs-one-year-anniversary
Earl Sweatshirt: Album Review
Imprecise Words: ‘Some Rap Songs’ 1 Year Later
With ‘Some Rap Songs,’ Earl figured out how to gather an audience on his own terms.
By Dylan "CineMasai" Green , Nov 2
During his 1969 lecture “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity,” writer James Baldwin admits he doesn’t like the word “artist.” He recognizes the moniker as an “imprecise word,” which attempts to get at the heart of how human beings experience reality. The word may not suffice the way he’d like it to, but he relishes the duties of the so-called “artist.” Near the end of his lecture, he explains an artist’s responsibility to the world:
“Only an artist can tell what it is like for anyone who gets this planet to survive it. What it’s like to die, or to have somebody die. What it’s like to fear death. What it’s like to fear. What it’s like to love. What it’s like to be glad.” –James Baldwin
A vocal sample of Baldwin saying “imprecise words” is the first sound bite we hear as Earl Sweatshirt begins his album Some Rap Songs. One of the virtues of any artist is honesty, and Earl’s honest display puts himself and the listener off-balance within the album’s opening seconds. From the sound of the self-produced opening track “Shattered Dreams,” Earl can tell you a lot about navigating grief through the haze of regret. The woozy vocal sample acts as a sliding floor through Earl’s psyche, foreshadowing uncertain times: “It was holes in the boat, we didn’t make a fuss,” he mutters with 20/20 hindsight
Some Rap Songs is an album as preoccupied with forward momentum as it is with backward glances. Finished in the wake of the death of Earl’s father and South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile, the project paints grief in every color and depicts trauma at every temperature. As dark as its subject matter can be, Some Rap Songs is an album about embracing love and friendship in the face of fear. One year later, its power is still entrancing.
Take “December 24th.” Present are traumatic thoughts of Earl’s grandmother’s alcoholism and bad tabs of acid, but he doesn’t steep himself in them. Instead, they exist simultaneously alongside affirmations from friends and himself for merely surviving another day. Earl’s depression may be real, but so is the fight.
“I made the beat right in Alchemist’s beat room,” Detroit polymath Denmark Vessey, the song’s producer, tells me over the phone. “I was more a fan than anything, but it was cool to be there on some humble shit.”
Earl liked the beat so much; he took it off of Vessey’s hands on the spot.
View the embedded media.
Denmark and Earl first made contact in late 2015 after Earl shouted out the Martin Lucid Dream EP on Twitter. Years later, Earl provided Denmark with a handful of beats, several of which soundtracked a portion of Denmark’s 2018 album SunGoNova. During a trip to California, Vessey was offered a unique opportunity to return the favor—a favor Vessey wouldn’t hear about again for several years.
Earl Sweatshirt: Album Review
Imprecise Words: ‘Some Rap Songs’ 1 Year Later
With ‘Some Rap Songs,’ Earl figured out how to gather an audience on his own terms.
By Dylan "CineMasai" Green , Nov 2
During his 1969 lecture “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity,” writer James Baldwin admits he doesn’t like the word “artist.” He recognizes the moniker as an “imprecise word,” which attempts to get at the heart of how human beings experience reality. The word may not suffice the way he’d like it to, but he relishes the duties of the so-called “artist.” Near the end of his lecture, he explains an artist’s responsibility to the world:
“Only an artist can tell what it is like for anyone who gets this planet to survive it. What it’s like to die, or to have somebody die. What it’s like to fear death. What it’s like to fear. What it’s like to love. What it’s like to be glad.” –James Baldwin
A vocal sample of Baldwin saying “imprecise words” is the first sound bite we hear as Earl Sweatshirt begins his album Some Rap Songs. One of the virtues of any artist is honesty, and Earl’s honest display puts himself and the listener off-balance within the album’s opening seconds. From the sound of the self-produced opening track “Shattered Dreams,” Earl can tell you a lot about navigating grief through the haze of regret. The woozy vocal sample acts as a sliding floor through Earl’s psyche, foreshadowing uncertain times: “It was holes in the boat, we didn’t make a fuss,” he mutters with 20/20 hindsight
Some Rap Songs is an album as preoccupied with forward momentum as it is with backward glances. Finished in the wake of the death of Earl’s father and South African poet laureate Keorapetse Kgositsile, the project paints grief in every color and depicts trauma at every temperature. As dark as its subject matter can be, Some Rap Songs is an album about embracing love and friendship in the face of fear. One year later, its power is still entrancing.
Take “December 24th.” Present are traumatic thoughts of Earl’s grandmother’s alcoholism and bad tabs of acid, but he doesn’t steep himself in them. Instead, they exist simultaneously alongside affirmations from friends and himself for merely surviving another day. Earl’s depression may be real, but so is the fight.
“I made the beat right in Alchemist’s beat room,” Detroit polymath Denmark Vessey, the song’s producer, tells me over the phone. “I was more a fan than anything, but it was cool to be there on some humble shit.”
Earl liked the beat so much; he took it off of Vessey’s hands on the spot.
View the embedded media.
Denmark and Earl first made contact in late 2015 after Earl shouted out the Martin Lucid Dream EP on Twitter. Years later, Earl provided Denmark with a handful of beats, several of which soundtracked a portion of Denmark’s 2018 album SunGoNova. During a trip to California, Vessey was offered a unique opportunity to return the favor—a favor Vessey wouldn’t hear about again for several years.
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