**The album successfully went live and is available in its entirety on iTunes and Spotify.
We stare down what looks like a tunnel void of anything but an eery bluish light. The camera tightens in and what is revealed to us isn’t a dark deserted road, or orbs of light, we’re looking at something a little more frightening: a single person with his face in the palm of his hand sitting on a living room couch. The music video is set up in a ghostly glow with us encircling and frequently squared , face-to-face with Earl Sweatshirt. Earl is talking to us, one-on-one. He’s imploring us to hear him out. We follow him as he staggers, one hand graced with a lit blunt and the other tracing a guiding wall. The video for Grief by Earl Sweatshirt was dropped on March 17th and has already racked up over half a million views. Additionally, the album art as well as the single were dropped (reportedly too early) to iTunes on the 17th available for pre-order. The point of this post? The album is expected tomorrow March 23rd. I implore you: buy. the. album.
Earl is a talented, unparalleled, and extremely young rapper than I am in awe of every single time I turn on Chum and now when I turn on Grief. The young rapper was discovered by rapper/producer/designer Tyler, the Creator as early as 2009 (which would put him at a mere 15 years-old at the time) and immediately turned on to Odd Future’s unreleased mixtape. Earl’s beats are enough to make you swallow–hard. They pump your heart for you with their deep thuds and swirling mids. Grief in particular forces me to close my eyes every time I press play. The second the song begins the true sound of his mix cannot be described in a word any better than Grief. The sound is somber, it’s brooding, its brow-furrowing. You want to take up the same posture as Earl when you see the way he’s doubled over on what could be his mother’s couch. His genius is only further by his lyrics:
We had females come in every hour on the dot
And the shit sound like a gavel when it knock
Focus on my chatter, ain’t as frantic as my thoughts
Lately I’ve been panicking a lot
Feeling like I’m stranded in a mob
Scrambling for Xanax out the canister to pop
Never getting out of hand, steady handling my job
Time damaging my ties
The young rapper, now 21, is about to drop his second LP in a few hours. The artwork is as dark and brooding as the music video: a black plane lit only by white ghostly light in the distance. The track list is reported to include:
1. Huey
2. Mantra
3. Faucet
4. Grief
5. Off Top
6. Grown Ups (ft. Dash)
7. AM // Radio (ft. Wiki)
8. Inside
9. Dna (ft. Na’kel)
10. Wool (ft. Vince Staples)
If you’re about truthful lyrics, about a young man fighting demons with art, about truth and perfectly-under-hyped music, I cannot point you towards Earl Sweatshirt enough. Whether you like rap or not, our peer is turning out truly astonishing beats and lyrics. Tyler was right to take him under his wing. SONY is right to have signed him. He is a poet, tortured like any other and more than deserving of kudos.
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!