Earl Sweatshirt

Doris (Tan Cressida)

17/20

The real story behind this album enhanced the mythology more than any fictitious rumours or the ‘Free Earl’ campaign ever could. Countless think pieces have been penned about it, but let’s quickly recap.

At the age of 16, Earl dropped his first mixtape, which proved him not only to be Odd Future’s most dexterous and lyrically noxious rapper, but also flaunted a level of skill unrivalled in the wider context of contemporary hip-hop. But just as the hype began to rapidly circulate, Earl suddenly vanished in June 2010, while his friends went on to completely demolish rap’s expired template without him during their chaotic ascent to the mainstream. Then came the revelations that he’d been sent to a Samoan boarding school for at-risk youths, and that the absent father he’d vehemently lambasted in his raps was, in fact, the South African poet and political activist Keorapetse Kgositsile.

So after hopping on a bunch of (mostly low-key) guest verses since arriving back on US soil last year, Earl’s comeback album has finally arrived. “I’m afraid I’m going to blow it, and all them expectations raising for me because daddy was a poet”, he confesses on Burgundy. So with the whole world watching, how can he meet up to expectations? Following a moral turn in Samoa, he’s ruled out the immature slurs and unsettling violent fantasies that characterised his old material, and here he tries to preserves the notoriety of his lyricism with figurative rather than literal extreme imagery and sustains our intrigue by reflecting on his surreal life story as if he’s lying on the shrink’s couch.

Tyler, The Creator, described as a big brother figure on Chum, is wisely kept at arm’s length, although he shows up to lower the tone on Sasquatch and he’s largely responsible for Woah, one of the album’s greatest tracks. Over a queasy, lo-fi beat, the pair resume unfinished business from 2010, with Earl at his most playful: “the misadventures of a shit-talker/ pissed as Rick Ross’s fifth sip of his sixth lager” while Tyler budges in to spit gritty hooks packed with obnoxious skate rat menace. A near-identical interpretation of RZA’s beat for Raekwon’s ’09 comeback single New Wu can be heard on the album’s closer Knight and the Clan’s mastermind also provides an original beat for Molasses, which features a sample that blends vintage soul with an oriental essence and will no doubt please fans of his Ghostdog soundtrack. Earl’s own forays into production, credited here under the moniker of randomblackdude, are exceptional, and there’s not a badly written verse on the album, though his newly sedated style of delivery makes the album drag slightly despite its brevity. While his apathetic slur worked when he played the Xanax-popping Beverly Hills brat on Frank Ocean’s Super Rich Kids and it mirrors his emotional shell-shock on the introspective Chum, too often it feels inappropriately lacklustre, especially on the otherwise incredible single Hive, where lines like “One adolescent, fuckin six nigga energy” were much better executed in their ferocious early live renditions.

It’s a flaw that disqualifies Doris from perfection, and only time will tell whether or not the record will endure in the minds of Odd Future’s controversy hungry fan base. But with Doris, the thrill of Earl’s talent eclipses the sensationalism which surrounds his name, an outcome that like the tale which preludes the album, is almost stranger than fiction.

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Words: David Reed