On “Chum”, the first single from Earl Sweatshirt’s debut album Doris, the 19-year-old rapper growls, “Been back a week and I already feel like calling it quits." And can you blame him? Earl burst onto the scene in 2010 with Earl, a remarkable 10-track project brimming with early-Eminem levels of ruthless imagery and a MF DOOM-esque eye for the abstract, chaining together absurd rhyme after rhyme in his high-pitched teenage voice. Simply put, it was indelible: it’s unsettling to hear a teenager deadpan, "Yo, I’m a hot and bothered astronaut, crashing while/jacking off to buffering vids of Asher Roth eating apple sauce.” And then, just as quickly as the accolades and eager comparisons rained in, Earl was gone, reportedly whisked away from music and the influence of hisOdd Future collective by his worried mother.
After a massively overblown “FREE EARL” campaign and a Complex hunt to find Earl, hidden away in a Samoan school, Earl returned in early 2012 an old soul. And, you know, with all of hip hop hanging on his next verse, his next song, and his long-anticipated follow-up to Earl. The Earl that returned wasn’t the Earl that left, though, tweeting, “Yeah. I hope i lose you as a fan if you only fuck with me cause i rapped about raping girls when i was 15." His first major appearance after his quiet return to music, a massive verse on the Odd Future posse cut "Oldie”, exhibited an Earl evidently much more keyed in and with less inclination for rape lyrics plus, his voice dropped what sounded like a few octaves. But it wasn’t until now, eighteen months after his return, that his second album is releasing.
Doris is short and tight as far as major label albums go in terms of its length, but that’s certainly not how it sounds. The album is deliberate in its pacing, winding on slowly and seldom crawling up into any agitation - but that’s no indictment. Earl’s perfected the art of pacing, letting his purposefulness push the album forward even if his voice rarely rises up above a low snarl. His pace, rather than holding him back, is just a refined vessel for his emotion. On “Centurion”, Earl is convincingly menacing, and the emotion that emanates from “Chum” derives its rawness from its restraint. He’s a talented lyricist, and not just because he’s got a remarkable eye for structure and wording - he knows how to shift words into emotion.
However, there was no album that was ever going to satisfy the unrealistic expectations that Earl hoisted upon Sweatshirt, and Doris isn’t as unfailingly good as we all wish it had been. But it’s still a fantastic place for a 19-year-old to work off of - Doris is still a good album, but more specifically, it’s a great album dragged down by mediocre songs and inconsistency. Earl is alternately aggressive and subdued, introspective and chest-puffing, brilliant and thoughtless. He doesn’t need to decide if he has to separate himself from Odd Future’s distinctive sound or whether he’s going to be a serious artist or any similar decisions just yet, but it’s a gate he’ll have to pass before he makes a truly transcendent album. Earl’s inconsistency’s not anything new, it’s also something of a motif throughout Tyler, The Creator’s work. But the difference is that Earl isn’t nearly as unhinged as Tyler - part of Tyler’s appeal is his unpredictability. Tyler can dart between demonic early-2000s Eminem rap and songs as absurd as “Trashwang”, and it’s almost endearing, because it’s Tyler and that’s part of his style. The same doesn’ go for Earl because it’s simply not his image, and when he’s channeling that part of Tyler it only drags him down.
Had you asked fans who the best rapper in Odd Future was three years ago, the unanimous answer would have been Earl, and the answer probably still should be. But Earl is coming up short in an area that Tyler, The Creator, Domo Genesis, and Hodgy Beats have all been polishing: his sound. There’s no need for Earl to pigeonhole himself into a small niche a la Joey Bada$$ and his frustrating affinity for ‘90s boom-bap, but even for an artist so young, it’s worrying to see Earl wavering between so many sounds. For all the progress he’s made in distancing himself from early comparisons to DOOM and Eminem, Earl is still “just” churning out music. Scanning over the tracklist I notice that in one album he’s got the grainy piano loop of “Chum”, rumbling chimes of “Molasses”, and the crawling bassline-driven “Hive”. Hell, the Tyler-produced “Sasquatch” is practically ripped-off of Tyler’s “Answer”.
That’s not to say any of these songs aren’t fantastic, because they are. Earl’s just being a hip hop chameleon, dragged along by his features and his producers. If he was any less versatile, this review might be a lot more negative. You know there’s a problem with continuity if you’re defending your artistic decisions by meta-referencing another song in your album, as Tyler does on “Whoa”. It’s easy to forget how young Earl is. Kendrick Lamar is 26, J. Cole is 28, A$AP Rocky is 24, even Tyler is 22. It’d be shocking to see an artist as mature and developed as Earl is capable of being still struggling with developing his own sound. But for now, Doris is dragged down by Earl’s indecision.
Part of these problems stem from Earl trying to do too much. Being hailed as one of the best rappers alive at age 16 probably does that to you. He’s shoved in two instrumental interludes to show off his chops behind the boards that slow down the middle of the album (spoiler alert: Randomblackdude, Earl’s producer alter-ego, isn’t quite good enough to pull this off), while throwing a painfully murky voice-filter over Mac Miller and his verses on “Guild”. And especially since his best friend and Odd Future co-member Tyler, The Creator has garnered so much praise for his creativity and unorthodox approach, it’s no surprise Earl is heading down that path.
Often, Earl insists on half-growling, half-muttering the majority of his verses, obscuring his voice with hazy beats or a barely audible delivery. Take “Hoarse”, where Earl raps a remarkable verse (“Fist clenched emulating '68 Olympics”) that’s so drunkenly staggering and slow that it blends into the instrumental. When Earl’s voice cuts through, like it does on the Christian Rich and RZA-produced “Molasses”, the results are rarely disappointing. Enunciation’s sharper, lyrics hit harder. He’s got an ear for instrumentals, but Doris is stacked with great beats that work against his style. Earl’s at his best when he pushes his lazy drawl up a half-gear to carve through his beats, like when he raps “Hard as armed services, y'all might have heard of him/Escobarbarian, best call the lawyers up” on “Pre”. It’s not to say the hungover delivery always doesn’t work, when the whole song works with his delivery, like the languid “Sunday”, it’s excellent. Earl has the rare ability to draw emotion and impact without shouting and snarling, but it doesn’t manifest itself every song.
Thankfully, Earl is talented enough with a mic that his delivery’s a secondary concern. It’s easy to forget just how much farther along he is than Joey Bada$$ and the like as a rapper, and Earl’s got a remarkably mature approach to his lyricism. Much like his chief influence DOOM, there’s a distinctive quality about his verses: “Full-grown terror type, Ferragamo doo-rag/With my nigga Travy out in Maui running two-mans”. Earl’s lyricism is densely populated with obscure references shaken into a constant onslaught of sharp syllables, and at his growling best he’s one of the best rappers alive. At the least, he’s a remarkable artist when it comes to assonance - it’s not an exaggeration to suggest Earl is one of the best ever at stacking vowels.
For a 19-year-old, Earl’s both extraordinarily incisive and vulnerable, partly resigned and partly defiant, with a gravity lurking behind his lines that even Tyler doesn’t have. On “Burgundy”, Earl’s aggressively defensive verses (“Grandma’s passing/But I’m too busy trying to get this fucking album cracking to see her”) are interposed by Vince Staples impersonating his fans and inner voices “I heard you back, I need them raps, nigga. I need the verse, I don’t care about what you going through or what you gotta do nigga, I need bars, sixteen of 'em." That’s a hell of a struggle for a 19-year-old, and Earl’s according passive-aggressive lashing-outs are strewn across Doris. When Earl’s voice momentarily leaps out from his meditative murmur and snarls "Craven and these Complex fuck niggas done tracked me down” on “Chum”, it’s a perfect flash of viciousness in an otherwise meditative and brooding track. He’s a rapper immersed in wordplay with a bite. Earl’s painfully boring on stage, but that’s a natural result of the music he makes, taking its oomph from its emotion and not the other way around.
At full cylinders, Doris is arresting. Earl’s music is a continuous landscape - shaking drums and arresting synths and shuddering samples and snaking basslines and at its core, his sandpaper rapping. But it’s not without its faults, because Doris is painfully inconsistent. Earl switches between moods, subjects, and vibes so abruptly and often that Doris reads as a haphazard collection of insecure late-night drunken musings from a teenager trying to juggle fun and fame. Phenomenal at its best, clumsy at its worst.
The last line of Doris: “Young, black, and jaded, vision hazy strolling through the night." It’s a perfect encapsulation of the album, a frustratingly erratic record made by an artist that doesn’t necessarily have it together. Earl’s still dealing with absentee father issues, with his grandmother’s death, of the shocks of fame, of Earl’s shadow - and he responds by making a project that’s almost defiant in its irrational imperfections. A startling one-minute instrumental interlude at the end of "Chum”. A off-puttingly terrible verse from Frank Ocean’s cousin to kick off the album. Vibe-shattering vocal samples (“Cut that bitch off!”). Doris isn’t perfect, but maybe that’s kind of the point.