Earl Sweatshirt Recreates Himself at the Tender Age of Nineteen

Three years ago, Earl Sweatshirt released his debut album, “Earl,” on which he rapped explicitly about raping and murdering women. But on “Chum,” his first single off of “Doris,” he opens with the shockingly honest lines, “It’s probably been twelve years since my father left, left me fatherless / And I just used to say ‘I hate him’ in dishonest jest.” A transformed Earl raps on “Doris,” which sounds strangely like a veteran album from the 19-year-old rapper. On “Doris,” Earl casts aside the gruesome world he had created on his debut for a more frank and personal approach. This newfound sincerity, along with Earl’s usual stunning delivery and lyricism, makes “Doris” shine both emotionally and technically.

“Doris” is packed with themes of loneliness, self-hatred, and the emptiness of fame. “Burgundy” opens with Vince Staples parodying the music industry as he snaps, “Why you so depressed and sad all the time, like a little bitch? What’s the problem, man? Niggas want to hear you rap, don’t nobody care about how you feel.” Earl’s first verse addresses more personal themes than he did on the entirety of his debut, expressing lament at prioritizing his music over his grandmother’s health (“Doris” is named in her memory), the absence of his father and its impact on his career (“I’m afraid I’m going to blow it / And when them expectations raising because daddy was a poet”), and his struggles with drug use to deal with the resulting anxiety (“Heart racing til blunt is lit, like, ‘He don’t give a fuck again, right?’”). Although by no means avant-garde, these themes are new to the talented young rapper, and the unrelenting barrage of excuses, apologies, and boasts transmits a common message: Earl wants to recreate himself, and he wants to prove that he can do it.

Earl constantly criticizes the person he was at the age of 15. On “Centurion,” he turns once again to the darker themes of murder and drug use, but this apparent reversion to his earlier material is turned on its head when Earl ends his first verse with “Hood, rich, wild, and ‘bout to run amok / Road to Hell paved with cement, covered trusseled drugs, toughen up.” The hook, a stark repetition of the line, “Well, alright. Okay, if that’s how you truly feel about it, then,” seems to play the role of Earl’s consciousness, emphasizing a lack of willpower and control over his actions. “Burgundy”—the title of which refers to the carpet Earl and Vince Staples describe as the setting for their songs about raped and murdered women on “Earl”—expresses discontent at the hollowness of his career. “Burgundy” is one of several tracks on “Doris” that seem to revisit “Earl,” each with a message of disillusionment or regret.

This sincere approach to “Doris” is even further enhanced by Earl’s usual astonishing lyricism. The internal rhyme schemes and relaxed delivery that helped made “Earl” so mesmerizing become the foundation of “Doris.” Earl stretches his lines over multiple bars, creating impressively complex verses that nevertheless sound almost pedestrian in his characteristically laidback delivery. On “Whoa,” Earl’s verses shine brightest as he threads such incredibly written brainteasers as “Too pretentious to pretend like he could lose with spitting / Streaming tubes of poop and twisted doobies full of euphemisms.” By the time he drawls, “Stupid, thought it up, jot it quick, thaw it out / Toss it right back like a vodka fifth,” Earl is downright boasting—he’s already won our forgiveness.

Like most releases by the radical hip-hop collective Odd Future, “Doris” predominantly features Odd Future members and close collaborators, with mixed results. On both “20 Wave Caps” and “Knight,” Domo Genesis’s upbeat delivery provides a foil to Earl’s verses, and on “Hive,” Vince Staples sounds venomous as he opens, “Quit with all that tough talk, bro, we know you niggas ain’t about shit / Come around, we gun them down, bodies piled, Auschwitz.” On “Sunday,” Frank Ocean delivers poignant line after poignant line, coming to an emotional apex with, “What good is west coast weather if you’re bipolar? / If I’ma need this sweater, I’d rather be where it’s cold, where it snows, and see how it goes.”

Not all the features on “Doris” are successful. A couple tracks are buoyed by Earl’s lyricism and little else, such as “Guild,” which features a vapid verse by Mac Miller over an uninspiring beat produced by Earl himself. On “Whoa,” Tyler, the Creator spends half of the hook spelling “GOLF WANG,” which makes his feature pale in comparison to Earl’s verses.

Although polarizing, Odd Future’s discography has made it clear that their music comes before the opinions of both fans and critics—“Doris” is no exception. Upon his return from Samoa, Earl tweeted that “I anticipate a loss of fans [upon releasing ‘Doris’].” This unusually candid assertion will probably hold true, but only because his two albums were written for completely different reasons: whereas “Earl” looked to horrify, “Doris” seeks redemption.

Se-Ho B. Kim can be reached at sehokim@crimson.com