Albums Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs (Discussion Thread)

brickflair

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T-K-G said:
He already did an interview about it

Basically confirmed the shyt i was already saying/thinking when 4 of the tracks leaked a year or so ago, main reason I wasnt in here tryna discuss it with the nikkas who didnt get what he was doin on this, waste of time

Earl Sweatshirt Fights Off Bad Vibes

Listening to the new record, the way your dad comes up … there’s a pride in it that hadn’t been present in some of the older stuff.
I recorded all that shyt before he died. Everything except for “Peanut,” I’d recorded. “Peanut” and “Riot!” And “Riot!” is my uncle Hugh [Masekela], who died two weeks after my pops.

Oh, man.
Yeah, “Peanut” and “Riot!” were the only two I added. But that album, even the shyt where my dad is speaking, I was gonna just drop that, not tell him, and tell him to send a cease-and-desist if he wanted.

So, you were working through the relationship in your head and in your music, and you were just going to present it to him. Did he ever get to hear it?
No. It’s rough. It was a crazy one, bro.

You’re really calling it Some Rap Songs?
Yes, sir.

How did you arrive at that title?
Just the concept of brevity. I’ve become … It’s been made evident to me that I’ve become kind of obsessed with simplifying shyt, which sometimes can lead to oversimplification. People take a lot of liberties, I feel like. Incomplete shyt is really stressful to me, and the concept of unsimplified fractions is really stressful to me. So, with things like the album title, how I structure shyt, and even how I write, it was really just like, What is this? The album title was kind of a response to that question.

Do you feel like people are gonna hear it and have that question?
Like, “What is this?”

It’s a bit of a detour for you. You’re getting a little bit closer to the thing — like, the independent rap, early 2000s, “We didn’t have a label; we did it ourselves” kind of thing. I feel like there are going to be people who hear it expecting polish, who won’t get it.
Yeah. I’m anticipating that a little bit, but I hope what people take away is … I guess just brevity. I’m always trying to whittle this shyt down … I have to be really thoughtful of what I’m doing. Music is a really powerful thing, and the people that I feel, like, get applauded for the subtlety are the people that care and are aware of the powerful shyt that they’re wielding. I’m aware of the fact that [Some Rap Songs] is kind of a hissing thing. There’s a lot of technical imperfections. The track list has gotta be perfect, and the song gotta loop perfect, and I gotta exit before … I really dedicate a lot of myself to not over-rapping.

It makes me think about Dilla. He didn’t program so cleanly. It was a lot of human time, and I feel like your approach to the lyrics and your approach to the production in this new stuff is getting toward that. It doesn’t have to sit perfectly on beat, which is interesting because you’re a very technically sharp rapper, but it makes me more conscious of your lines when you’re not.
Exactly!

Who did you end up working with?
It was just people that I was around. The first one that I did was “December 24th.” It was a beat that Denmark gave me.

Denmark Vessey?
Yeah. He’s just a prolific dude, a big brain that’s been inspiring me since I heard the dude. Then I got beats from my friends, my brothers … Sage [Elsesser]. That’s who I really spent most of my time and shared space with. Navy Blue’s on that album. He’s on “The Mint,” and he did the beat for “The Bends.” Yeah, him, my man that DJs for me, Black Noi$e, who is also really incredible. Just, like, too versatile a person, musically. The rest of it … I did a bunch of production. Sixpress from sLUms did “Nowhere2Go,” and Gio from Standing on the Corner helped me mix and master the whole thing and also did cover design and back-cover design with me.
Click to expand...
yea i peeped this but i think the npr is gon be audio
 
T-K-G

T-K-G

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Extra bits
How do you feel like you’re different now? Are you in a better space? Earlier in the year, we got word that you canceled some tour dates, and you were saying there was depression. Is that something you’ve worked through?
I’m working on it, man. It’s a day-to-day thing. For a long time this year, I was still kind of in shock and still can be shocked by the fact that my dad died. That shyt really threw me the fukk off.

It’s something you don’t plan for, and it’s something that can take months to understand. I lost mine at the top of the decade, and it’s not normal. It’s not a thought process that you get used to. And especially at your age.
Yeah, it really fukked me up. We make movies in our heads, you know? Where this happens. And then this happens as a result of that. It’s kind of like … having faith, I guess. It’s like, I know this is going to happen. So, then when that shyt happened with my pops … I talked to my brother, who I saw was doing better. He’s about eight years older than me. He was at a different place with my pops, and I remember asking him like, “Yo, how do you — you know — we know the same nikka, like … how are you not as mad as me?” This nikka was like, “Because I had to come back as an adult and spend time with him as an adult.” I did work with the intention of being able to come back literally this year, at the top of this year. I’d finally pledged, like, “I’m going home. I can do it. I can see this.” And he died. Going through that existential thing, plus other existential elements of my pops, him being a public figure, the public figure that he is. And then being Earl Sweatshirt on top of it?

That’s a lot to process.
At a certain point, I put my head down, and we did our shyt and buried our father. I’ve just been figuring it out. But at a certain point, all of the pressures just kind of broke me. Just the idea of having to perform while I was kind of in this weird space, it was like, no fukking way. Why would I risk it? That’s not some dice I’m trying to roll. I need to process and heal some things for myself before I can be presenting myself.

Your new record is really just a lot of intense loops.
It’s infinitum. It’s the snake eating its tail. I keep locking in the loops. To write something complete to a loop, I feel like it takes a lot.

It feels like the promise of the early hip-hop, taking something and making something else of your own out of it. Like, collage art.
Exactly! And you have to be potent for that shyt to matter. If you ain’t got shyt to say, nikkas really are not gonna want to hear you on a loop. You can get away with it when the beat is changing and showing you when the emotion changes. But that loop, that’s just a background.
 
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T.H.E. Goat said:
It’s fukking crazy how all of this coming together because I noticed Sage Ellesser did beats on Dump Gawd Hommy Edition but that was before I realized he was a pro skater:snoop:
Click to expand...
Earl has a beat on one and a actually tape with Mach
 
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b_low_brown

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Peak said:
Your ears need refinement :umad:
Click to expand...

I been on earl since he was hyping kitchen cutlery miss me with the BS. If he wanna drop this trash that’s fine but this is some experimental nonsense and if this is where his albums are going count me out. Glad I caught him on his last tour in 2015 before he fell the fukk off
 
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