Perhaps the fact that the hey-day of Odd Future already seems so distant in the past says something quite meaningful about the rapidly accelerating rate at which we consume music in the digitised age. It has only been 2 years ago since both figurehead Tyler, The Creator and the then mysterious Earl Sweatshirt dropped their last full length projects, and yet it feels like forever since the group have been rabidly storming online headlines. And while Tyler is still clearly the figurehead of the group, its felt for some time that the true star of the posse has been Earl Sweatshirt, aka Thebe Kgositsile.
The idea seems a little bizarre given his seemingly reclusive media presence and more heavily complex approach to rapping, but this aesthetic has earned him points of favour in the ‘true hip-hop’ circles that none of his fellow Odd Future members have ever had. The fervent clamouring for his debut album and the widespread acclaim it met has never really been matched by any of the other members. And while the record still had mannerisms that were Odd Future-like, it was bizarre how mature and experimentally crafted it was considering he was just 16 years old; not even Tyler’s stuff was sounding so tightly wound. Now finally after two years of radio silence we have the next step of his career, and it only gets weirder from here.
Doris was already quite a shadowy affair, but it had undeniable glimpses of sunshine, both instrumentally and lyrically. I Don’t Like Shit… opts to go yet another shade darker. The first four tracks demonstrate Earl’s intent for this record pretty unambiguously. Opener ‘Huey’ has the trademark Odd Future quirky piano line, and even a sense of optimism in Earl’s energised delivery. The relentless monotone flows are nowhere to be seen, and it actually suits him better than you might imagine. The following tracks just get moodier and darker as they go along, each instrumental sounding like a chopped and screwed version of the last. This culminates in the record’s apex depressive centrepiece: ‘Grief’. Here we see Earl being both braggadocios and emotionally vulnerable at the same time, delivering some of the most interesting lyrical imagery I’ve heard this year. This is probably one of his best songs instrumentally as well, being so overcast and reverb soaked it sounds like someone has run a doom metal song through a malfunctioning amp at 100kbps.
Regrettably, the rest of the album does not fair quite as well as the opening. Every song here is produced by Earl, except for ‘Off Top’, which does add a feeling of cohesion. However, it also exposes some of the flaws Earl has as a producer. The instrumentals on tracks like ‘Grown Ups’ and ‘AM // Radio’ feel repetitive and eventually borderline annoying, with the beat switch-up on the latter sounding quite amateurish. Earl’s performance isn’t enough to save these songs either; they’re far from bad but don’t do quite enough to keep your attention. Things look up a little when it comes to the finishing duo of ‘DNA’ and ‘Wool’, both being the most hard-hitting moments on the album. If ‘DNA’ was a solo track it’d be an easy highlight, with its ominous piano led instrumental and Earl’s aggressive burst fire flow, but for some reason unbeknownst to anyone with functioning ears the OF affiliate Na’kel, last heard on Tyler’s ‘Trashwang’, shows up for a verse. It’s intentionally bad, but unintentionally out of place. Whilst it would sound right at home on an upbeat, fun of a track like ‘Trashwang’ it sounds totally lost here and ultimately acts as a waste of a potentially good song. The closer ‘Wool’ has almost the exact opposite issue, with Vince Staples showing up and actually kind of upstaging Earl which makes the whole exercise feel a little underwhelming.
Whilst this record is an interesting new direction for Earl, it feels more like a promise of the things to come than a definitive statement of what he is capable of. It certainly not without its charms and excellent moments, but instead of blowing the doors open like Doris did it, it quietly opens them and leaves without leaving much impression in the brief time it spends with you.
5/10
Highlights: Grief, Mantra, Off Top
Similar to: Tyler The Creator, MF DOOM, Mick Jenkins
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