KingsOfKings
♟️ GRANDMASTERS ♟️
Such a ill album.
Albums Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs (Discussion Thread)
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This album is beautiful.
I think of random lines and the whole song just flows effortlessly afterwards.
The album is short but packed with depth, this is the work of an artist who knows their craft and themselves. The introspection and wordplay are one here. One of the handful of rappers whose music matured in a natural progression in alignment with their life.
Eclipse is one of the best songs I've ever heard.
I think of random lines and the whole song just flows effortlessly afterwards.
The album is short but packed with depth, this is the work of an artist who knows their craft and themselves. The introspection and wordplay are one here. One of the handful of rappers whose music matured in a natural progression in alignment with their life.
Eclipse is one of the best songs I've ever heard.
KingsOfKings
♟️ GRANDMASTERS ♟️
Bigblackted4
Superstar
Projected introduced me to Navy Blue who is dope af
KingsOfKings
♟️ GRANDMASTERS ♟️
Dude is
KingsOfKings
♟️ GRANDMASTERS ♟️
4 years ago today mark
If we’re not counting features and random singles but full-on projects, this is the last we heard from Earl/Thebe. “solace” saw him at his worst state, but ended with a slight ray of hope in the lines above. His position as the youngest old man hasn’t changed much. If anything, it’s been more set in stone with Some Rap Songs, his best project yet and the album I’ve been wanting to hear from Earl Sweatshirt since his return from Samoa in 2012. While both albums had their highlights, I left Doris and I Don’t Like shyt with a lot to be desired. The lurking shadow of Odd Future still encompassed Earl on these projects, as even he himself realized that he was in a bit of a purgatory where he couldn’t quite be Earl, nor Thebe. With “solace,” it was the first time that I truly felt like I was hearing Thebe.
We’ll return to “solace” throughout this review, but you’re all here to talk about Some Rap Songs, so I’ll get to it. This is a fukking great album, full stop. It is the best thing Earl/Thebe has put out yet and is the project I’ve been wanting from him for years. Right off the bat with “Shattered Dreams,” we hear the new sound he has developed for himself. No longer rapping behind the dark and DAW-based soundscapes that defined Odd Future for years, he’s instead rapping behind hypnotic, looping samples, usually from obscure soul and funk songs from the 1970s & 80s.
Taking an initial sample from a James Baldwin speech, and then another from The Endeavors that serves as the song’s main backbone, Thebe sets the stone for what this album is about: him. Obviously, but more specifically, his headspace. Ending the first chorus (which serves as the album’s first set of bars) with the lines “Blast off, buckshot into my ceilin' / Why ain't nobody tell me I was bleedin'? / Please, nobody pinch me out this dream.” The depression we saw him fighting through on “solace” and throughout his entire discography is very much alive, but he’s seemingly been working on himself a lot since the last time we’ve heard him.
This self-progress seeps through the entire record, as Thebe sounds the most confident we’ve ever heard him on this album, fully aware of all his abilities and working within a sound that truly fits him best. Part of it is some of the weight of depression being lifted off his soul, as both “Shattered Dreams” and the next track, “Red Water”, mention Thebe wondering to himself why he didn’t try to fix himself sooner, as he spits “Yeah, I know I'm a king / Stock on my shoulder, I was sinkin' / I ain't know that I could leave.”
Also on “Red Water”, Thebe introduces the album’s concept of brevity with the line “Gotta keep it brief”, as Some Rap Songs only clocks in at 24 minutes with most tracks only lasting less than two minutes. This has been the album’s biggest point of contention among fans so I will say this: anyone who thinks this album is too short is a fool and deserves to only be able to listen to bloated-ass mainstream rap albums for the rest of their life. Some Rap Songs doesn’t waste a single minute of its runtime and rarely do I ever feel like the album needs more tracks, or needs longer tracks. Everything is damn near perfect where it is, as one of the biggest problems of previous Earl Sweatshirt albums was that some of the songs (like “DNA” and “Mantra” from IDLS or “Hive” and “Guild” from Doris) went on for much longer than necessary.
This sense of brevity really kicks in with “Cold Summers” which gets in and out in a minute before you even know it. But despite its short length, even for this album, Thebe gets in plenty of wisdom that shows you how he’s grown over the years, with the line “Of course my old lover was scorned, we grow from it” always getting me, as one of my keys to getting out a depressive funk I found myself in over a year ago was taking a step outside myself, and not having so much anger for those who “wronged” me in the past. Thebe knows and I knows that not only does this scorn heal over time, it’s healing that can only be done with growth.
And growth is the album’s strongest theme, as in the “few summers too long” he spent away, a lot has changed. On a slightly superficial level, he’s grown as a rapper. His rhymes and flows are tighter, his voice has added some more timber with age as lines like “nikka it's on, chest thump, his head thump on the floor / We pressed up on the boy, no more bluffin'” feel much more genuine and assured than “I'll fukk the freckles off your face, bytch.” I don’t want to spend this review putting down his old music so much but it really is amazing to see how much he’s grown into himself with this album. On a recent Indieheads Podcast, I discussed with my co-host Jackson about what makes this album feel so different than his previous work, and that it’s because he’s no longer in a limbo between the person he was before he left for Samoa and the person he was meant to become upon coming back. He’s truly found himself as a person, and Some Rap Songs is the artistic expression of that.
We’ll return to “solace” throughout this review, but you’re all here to talk about Some Rap Songs, so I’ll get to it. This is a fukking great album, full stop. It is the best thing Earl/Thebe has put out yet and is the project I’ve been wanting from him for years. Right off the bat with “Shattered Dreams,” we hear the new sound he has developed for himself. No longer rapping behind the dark and DAW-based soundscapes that defined Odd Future for years, he’s instead rapping behind hypnotic, looping samples, usually from obscure soul and funk songs from the 1970s & 80s.
Taking an initial sample from a James Baldwin speech, and then another from The Endeavors that serves as the song’s main backbone, Thebe sets the stone for what this album is about: him. Obviously, but more specifically, his headspace. Ending the first chorus (which serves as the album’s first set of bars) with the lines “Blast off, buckshot into my ceilin' / Why ain't nobody tell me I was bleedin'? / Please, nobody pinch me out this dream.” The depression we saw him fighting through on “solace” and throughout his entire discography is very much alive, but he’s seemingly been working on himself a lot since the last time we’ve heard him.
This self-progress seeps through the entire record, as Thebe sounds the most confident we’ve ever heard him on this album, fully aware of all his abilities and working within a sound that truly fits him best. Part of it is some of the weight of depression being lifted off his soul, as both “Shattered Dreams” and the next track, “Red Water”, mention Thebe wondering to himself why he didn’t try to fix himself sooner, as he spits “Yeah, I know I'm a king / Stock on my shoulder, I was sinkin' / I ain't know that I could leave.”
Also on “Red Water”, Thebe introduces the album’s concept of brevity with the line “Gotta keep it brief”, as Some Rap Songs only clocks in at 24 minutes with most tracks only lasting less than two minutes. This has been the album’s biggest point of contention among fans so I will say this: anyone who thinks this album is too short is a fool and deserves to only be able to listen to bloated-ass mainstream rap albums for the rest of their life. Some Rap Songs doesn’t waste a single minute of its runtime and rarely do I ever feel like the album needs more tracks, or needs longer tracks. Everything is damn near perfect where it is, as one of the biggest problems of previous Earl Sweatshirt albums was that some of the songs (like “DNA” and “Mantra” from IDLS or “Hive” and “Guild” from Doris) went on for much longer than necessary.
This sense of brevity really kicks in with “Cold Summers” which gets in and out in a minute before you even know it. But despite its short length, even for this album, Thebe gets in plenty of wisdom that shows you how he’s grown over the years, with the line “Of course my old lover was scorned, we grow from it” always getting me, as one of my keys to getting out a depressive funk I found myself in over a year ago was taking a step outside myself, and not having so much anger for those who “wronged” me in the past. Thebe knows and I knows that not only does this scorn heal over time, it’s healing that can only be done with growth.
And growth is the album’s strongest theme, as in the “few summers too long” he spent away, a lot has changed. On a slightly superficial level, he’s grown as a rapper. His rhymes and flows are tighter, his voice has added some more timber with age as lines like “nikka it's on, chest thump, his head thump on the floor / We pressed up on the boy, no more bluffin'” feel much more genuine and assured than “I'll fukk the freckles off your face, bytch.” I don’t want to spend this review putting down his old music so much but it really is amazing to see how much he’s grown into himself with this album. On a recent Indieheads Podcast, I discussed with my co-host Jackson about what makes this album feel so different than his previous work, and that it’s because he’s no longer in a limbo between the person he was before he left for Samoa and the person he was meant to become upon coming back. He’s truly found himself as a person, and Some Rap Songs is the artistic expression of that.
It was very clear this was going to be the case right away when I first heard “Nowhere2go,” the album’s lead single and one that, in retrospect, wasn’t so much an indicator of the album’s sound. The song’s glitchy production, done by Booliemane and Ade Hakim (FKA Sixpress), feels similar to the work of Shabazz Palaces, in that wait how the fukk is he rapping on this? The percussion is all over the place, the vocals heard throughout feel like one of those “pop song but 800% slower” videos, and other little flourishes that can only be discovered on repeated listens. The content itself though? It was a proper re-introduction of Earl/Thebe, giving you an idea of what he’s been up to, how he’s feeling, and where he’s going from here. Despite the somber tone that bars like “Yeah, I think I spent most of my life depressed (Most of my) / Only thing on my mind was death (On my) / Didn't know if my time was next (Next, yeah, yeah)” imply, the use of past tense here is really important, as it’s clear he’s doing a hell of a lot better.
I be with Mike and Med (Mike, Med)
Nowadays I be with Sage and with Six-press, ya dig? (Press)
I'm in L.A. with Glen, please come and claim ya kid
I cannot play with them (Yeah, yeah, uh, whoa)
Above is the shoutout on the track to the friends he’s made or he’s gotten closer to since the last time we heard him, as depression is rarely a beast you can fight alone. He gives a shout out to his fans, but there’s an asterisk there, as despite the fact that “You went and gave me a cape (Cape),” “that never gave me no hope (Hope, yeah, hope, hope).” And as I said before, I still can’t believe that Thebe is rapping on this song. I had a similar reaction to “Ain’t It Funny” by Danny Brown when that came out, although my reaction here was a bit more muted considering the difference in sound/content these songs have. Nevertheless, both songs left me in a flustered state to figure out how their brains are operating like this. Oh and Thebe’s got himself a lowkey Carti flow on this that I like a lot but that’s neither here nor there.
Speaking about brevity earlier, I should probably get back to the rest of the songs, huh? December 24th is one of the album’s most straightforward, living up to the title of the album for just a fukking rap song. The first recorded for the album, Earl/Thebe is just going off an incredible beat with bars like “Allen with the picked 'fro, answer in the outlet / Alley-oopin' all the shyt home / Powered-up, out for the assist / Don't panic when it get cold, we go at it, ho” and “Don't think he said he pro-violence / But it's gon' be your problem if he did, though.” However in the midst of these of bars towards the end, Earl/Thebe raps “Bad apple, daily clashin' with my kinfolk / Bad acid did damage to my mental,” with both these lines indicating major themes on this album, issues with his family and drug addiction.
And conveniently enough, these themes pop up on the next track but it’s clear some time has passed, as Thebe’s had some peace and acceptance, and even regret for how he’s treated his family, specifically his mother, with the bar “Momma say don't play with them scabs / It's safe to say I see the reason I'm bleeding out,” obviously a double entendre for both the literal scabs that develop on your body and the more symbolic scabs, the bad influences on your life that eventually drain you for everything you’re worth. He gets into more of these societal scabs the bar before: “Don't play with us, I revisit the past / Port wine and pages of pads,” referencing South Africa’s history of Apartheid with the references to Port wine and the Pages of Pass, calling back to his South African father who lived in exile in the United States for various periods of his life.
A specific line in “The Bends” hurts even more knowing it was recorded before his father’s death, when Thebe raps early on “Peace to my mans, gotta go be with your fam more (For real).” However despite this bittersweet beginning, the song overall is a song of inspiration, seeing how far he and his peers have come “a long way from the dikkies and dirty JanSports.” The line “Bend, we don't break, we not the bank” reoccurs throughout the verse, repeating both because this is a song and repetition is an extremely popular element used in songwriting, but also as a constant reminder for Thebe and his peers to not let them win and destroy you.
This inspiration keeps ahold on the track “Azucar”, featuring some truly great production from Navy Blue. Bars like “My cushion was a bosom on bad days / There's not a black woman I can't thank” and “I only get better with time / That's what my mom say to dodge Satan” show a positive outlook, but Thebe knows he’s not 100% there yet. There’s still some “sugar in my gas tank” as he says, but there’s still a lot of growth here. I think the songs most powerful line once again is in his reference to his family: “Mama said she used to see my father in me / Said I was not offended.” Having spent most of his early career bad mouthing his father, it’s almost shocking to hear that at one point in his youth Thebe loved his father and didn’t mind being compared to him. It seems now that’s come full circle once again in his adulthood.
This sense of hope moves to the shadows on the intensely paced “Eclipse”, as even on an album filled with blink and you’ll miss it moments and songs, “Eclipse” says a lot in very little time with a hypnotic and psychedelic beat, locking in a tough to achieve loop as Earl/Thebe’s vocals seemed to have aged backwards almost (not shocking considering the album was recorded throughout a three-years span). I consider this a flashback of sorts into a darker time in his life, as after the chorus he opens the song with “Say goodbye to my openness, total eclipse / Of my shine that I've grown to miss when holding shyt in / Open my lids, my eyes said my soul is amiss (Soul is) / The signs say we close to the end (Close)”
While obviously not every song has a clear date of when it was recorded (except for “December 24th”), it’s a bit easier to figure out the timeline when considering how much fame weighs on Earl/Thebe’s conscious. “Facts, it's rugged on the peak / Don't stumble, serve culinary treats, bro (Please) / The herd hungry, gotta eat (Woah)” calls back somewhat to Vince Staples’ intro on “Burgandy”:
What’s up, nikka? Why you so depressed and sad all the time like a little bytch? What’s the problem, man? nikkas want to hear you rap. Don’t nobody care about how you feel, we want raps, nikka. Raps.
I be with Mike and Med (Mike, Med)
Nowadays I be with Sage and with Six-press, ya dig? (Press)
I'm in L.A. with Glen, please come and claim ya kid
I cannot play with them (Yeah, yeah, uh, whoa)
Above is the shoutout on the track to the friends he’s made or he’s gotten closer to since the last time we heard him, as depression is rarely a beast you can fight alone. He gives a shout out to his fans, but there’s an asterisk there, as despite the fact that “You went and gave me a cape (Cape),” “that never gave me no hope (Hope, yeah, hope, hope).” And as I said before, I still can’t believe that Thebe is rapping on this song. I had a similar reaction to “Ain’t It Funny” by Danny Brown when that came out, although my reaction here was a bit more muted considering the difference in sound/content these songs have. Nevertheless, both songs left me in a flustered state to figure out how their brains are operating like this. Oh and Thebe’s got himself a lowkey Carti flow on this that I like a lot but that’s neither here nor there.
Speaking about brevity earlier, I should probably get back to the rest of the songs, huh? December 24th is one of the album’s most straightforward, living up to the title of the album for just a fukking rap song. The first recorded for the album, Earl/Thebe is just going off an incredible beat with bars like “Allen with the picked 'fro, answer in the outlet / Alley-oopin' all the shyt home / Powered-up, out for the assist / Don't panic when it get cold, we go at it, ho” and “Don't think he said he pro-violence / But it's gon' be your problem if he did, though.” However in the midst of these of bars towards the end, Earl/Thebe raps “Bad apple, daily clashin' with my kinfolk / Bad acid did damage to my mental,” with both these lines indicating major themes on this album, issues with his family and drug addiction.
And conveniently enough, these themes pop up on the next track but it’s clear some time has passed, as Thebe’s had some peace and acceptance, and even regret for how he’s treated his family, specifically his mother, with the bar “Momma say don't play with them scabs / It's safe to say I see the reason I'm bleeding out,” obviously a double entendre for both the literal scabs that develop on your body and the more symbolic scabs, the bad influences on your life that eventually drain you for everything you’re worth. He gets into more of these societal scabs the bar before: “Don't play with us, I revisit the past / Port wine and pages of pads,” referencing South Africa’s history of Apartheid with the references to Port wine and the Pages of Pass, calling back to his South African father who lived in exile in the United States for various periods of his life.
A specific line in “The Bends” hurts even more knowing it was recorded before his father’s death, when Thebe raps early on “Peace to my mans, gotta go be with your fam more (For real).” However despite this bittersweet beginning, the song overall is a song of inspiration, seeing how far he and his peers have come “a long way from the dikkies and dirty JanSports.” The line “Bend, we don't break, we not the bank” reoccurs throughout the verse, repeating both because this is a song and repetition is an extremely popular element used in songwriting, but also as a constant reminder for Thebe and his peers to not let them win and destroy you.
This inspiration keeps ahold on the track “Azucar”, featuring some truly great production from Navy Blue. Bars like “My cushion was a bosom on bad days / There's not a black woman I can't thank” and “I only get better with time / That's what my mom say to dodge Satan” show a positive outlook, but Thebe knows he’s not 100% there yet. There’s still some “sugar in my gas tank” as he says, but there’s still a lot of growth here. I think the songs most powerful line once again is in his reference to his family: “Mama said she used to see my father in me / Said I was not offended.” Having spent most of his early career bad mouthing his father, it’s almost shocking to hear that at one point in his youth Thebe loved his father and didn’t mind being compared to him. It seems now that’s come full circle once again in his adulthood.
This sense of hope moves to the shadows on the intensely paced “Eclipse”, as even on an album filled with blink and you’ll miss it moments and songs, “Eclipse” says a lot in very little time with a hypnotic and psychedelic beat, locking in a tough to achieve loop as Earl/Thebe’s vocals seemed to have aged backwards almost (not shocking considering the album was recorded throughout a three-years span). I consider this a flashback of sorts into a darker time in his life, as after the chorus he opens the song with “Say goodbye to my openness, total eclipse / Of my shine that I've grown to miss when holding shyt in / Open my lids, my eyes said my soul is amiss (Soul is) / The signs say we close to the end (Close)”
While obviously not every song has a clear date of when it was recorded (except for “December 24th”), it’s a bit easier to figure out the timeline when considering how much fame weighs on Earl/Thebe’s conscious. “Facts, it's rugged on the peak / Don't stumble, serve culinary treats, bro (Please) / The herd hungry, gotta eat (Woah)” calls back somewhat to Vince Staples’ intro on “Burgandy”:
What’s up, nikka? Why you so depressed and sad all the time like a little bytch? What’s the problem, man? nikkas want to hear you rap. Don’t nobody care about how you feel, we want raps, nikka. Raps.
Obviously the most ironic thing about Some Rap Songs is that a good majority of the album is about how Thebe feels. However, he’s been able tangle his personal life into the stellar wordplay he’s known for with less and less effort, as unlike some of his early inspirations like Eminem who developed what I’ll call “technical rap brain worms,” Thebe is able to spin his life into poetry naturally. Thus, we get to “Veins,” which was initially the album’s last rap song in the original version.
“Veins” in general is a callback to the album we heard and the albums and songs we heard before it. With the Billy Jones sample and Earl’s tone, it definitely feels like it was intended to be the outro of sorts in sound too, not only content. There’s just so many good lines and bars here so I’ll just list it down to a top 5:
“Stuck in Trump Land, watching subtlety decayin'”
“When it's time to put my burnt body in a case / Tell my momma I said thank you”
“Since birth mama raised and burped me, I ain't changed / I'm a man, I'm just saying that I stayed imperfect”
“It's been a minute since I heard applause / It's been a minute since you seen or heard from me, I've been swerving calls”
“I've been eating good you can see it in my tummy / But I'm buggin', I've been spending more money than I'm making"
“Veins” and the following “Playing Possum” should have been seen as a victory lap. I mean just look at the night and day difference between the lines above from “Veins” and then this line from “solace”:
I spent days faded and anemic
You could see it in my face, I ain't been eatin', I'm just wastin' away
Having the end of your album be a tribute to your parents with their voices going back and forth on a track showcasing their love and passion for their family and their work? It’s wholesome as hell. Or was. Still is? I’m not exactly sure, as right after we hear the applause play upon the end of Keorapetse Kgositsile reading his poem “Anguish Longer Than Sorrow,” the album turns rotten, more foul than anything we’ve heard before.
It’s a taste more bitter for how familiar it is. On an album dedicated to his growth as a person and his wins in the battle against depression, his efforts are deemed futile by the sudden death of his father. Over a distorted sample and rusted piano chords, Thebe bears his soul. Trying to recreate the sounds and flows of “Nowhere2go” almost, he finds himself lost. Any ad-lib of “ayy” feels like one of denial. Lines like “Family saw you on that stage, left it not amazed” and “Flushin' through the pain, depression, this is not a phase, ayy / Picking out his grave, couldn't help but feel out of place” are brutal. Similar to “solace,” this song feels like the sonic embodiment of depression.
“Veins” in general is a callback to the album we heard and the albums and songs we heard before it. With the Billy Jones sample and Earl’s tone, it definitely feels like it was intended to be the outro of sorts in sound too, not only content. There’s just so many good lines and bars here so I’ll just list it down to a top 5:
“Stuck in Trump Land, watching subtlety decayin'”
“When it's time to put my burnt body in a case / Tell my momma I said thank you”
“Since birth mama raised and burped me, I ain't changed / I'm a man, I'm just saying that I stayed imperfect”
“It's been a minute since I heard applause / It's been a minute since you seen or heard from me, I've been swerving calls”
“I've been eating good you can see it in my tummy / But I'm buggin', I've been spending more money than I'm making"
“Veins” and the following “Playing Possum” should have been seen as a victory lap. I mean just look at the night and day difference between the lines above from “Veins” and then this line from “solace”:
I spent days faded and anemic
You could see it in my face, I ain't been eatin', I'm just wastin' away
Having the end of your album be a tribute to your parents with their voices going back and forth on a track showcasing their love and passion for their family and their work? It’s wholesome as hell. Or was. Still is? I’m not exactly sure, as right after we hear the applause play upon the end of Keorapetse Kgositsile reading his poem “Anguish Longer Than Sorrow,” the album turns rotten, more foul than anything we’ve heard before.
It’s a taste more bitter for how familiar it is. On an album dedicated to his growth as a person and his wins in the battle against depression, his efforts are deemed futile by the sudden death of his father. Over a distorted sample and rusted piano chords, Thebe bears his soul. Trying to recreate the sounds and flows of “Nowhere2go” almost, he finds himself lost. Any ad-lib of “ayy” feels like one of denial. Lines like “Family saw you on that stage, left it not amazed” and “Flushin' through the pain, depression, this is not a phase, ayy / Picking out his grave, couldn't help but feel out of place” are brutal. Similar to “solace,” this song feels like the sonic embodiment of depression.
Cloutius Maximus
with the aid of the Funk...
i actually wasn't feeling this at first but it finally hit for me last year and this shyt is 10/10 for me now
easily Earl's best album so far and will be seen as a hip-hop classic in time
easily Earl's best album so far and will be seen as a hip-hop classic in time
FukyourFort
All Star
Fully agree. Its a classic and his best album
Guvnor
Da Speculative Spectacle®
maybe not his best but definitely his last good album imo.
KingsOfKings
♟️ GRANDMASTERS ♟️
5 year mark today
KingsOfKings
♟️ GRANDMASTERS ♟️
6 years in
Fiji Water
Every moment is an opportunity
I thought I was the only one still bumping this