Review: Earl Sweatshirt - I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside
By Eli Schoop, Contributor
[Columbia/Tan Cressida; 2015]
Rating: 4/5
Key Tracks: “Huey,” “Faucet,” “Grief”
In the pantheon of Odd Future artists, no one has been shrouded in more mystery than its golden boy, Earl Sweatshirt. Sure, Frank Ocean has been almost MIA since his landmark 2012 release Channel Orange, yet the sunny, SoCal-tinged vibes that protruded from his music were anything but mysterious.
Earl, on the other hand, was shipped to boarding school on the Pacific Coast by his disapproving mother at the height of his hype machine and not heard from for close to a year. He then dropped Doris, an album seeped in his newfound emotional maturity, which opposed the antics of his brother, Tyler, the Creator. It was sepia-toned, melancholy and full of hard-hitting tales that exacerbated Earl's misanthropy while still maintaining the no-holds-barred rhymes for which he is known.
On his new record I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside, the intensity and bold-faced honesty have been turned up to a new degree. The title alone suggests more of the artist himself and nothing less. This is hip-hop, bare boned yet full of life. Earl has all but shed the semi-childish overtones of his self-titled 2010 debut to focus on fresh takes on his mental state and the issues he deals with.
“Huey” is a fleeting snapshot of the world he's creating, but nonetheless it's one of the strongest cuts throughout the LP. Jumpy synths fit for a TV sitcom theme song and a classic boom-bap beat all swirl around Earl's easy flow. More often than not, Earl is projecting what he's feeling onto his beat and I Don't Like Shit's overall environment of uneasiness.
This is shown most prominently by “Faucet” and “Grief.” The former feels like an alternate Doris beat, unassuming in its jagged and fortuitous nature and lyrics like, “Out the toaster I gotta focus, my family problems / Shrunk and widen with the bumps of my personal findings,” show his vulnerability and inability to stay grounded.
“Grief,” however, is simply nasty, both sonically and tonally. It sounds as if he recorded the song through a potato, the sound quality is so harsh. More akin to William Basinski than anything Odd Future-related, Earl tweeted that “grief is a final lament and epilogue.” Closer to the apocalypse than anything else in hip-hop, it's a testament to the creativity that Earl exalts throughout his third album.
There aren't any Odd Future features besides Tyler's brief cameo on “Off Top,” where his voice mimics Earl's as a sort of shadow. It's fitting, considering Earl, the younger brother, has eclipsed his older sibling in artistic scope and framework. I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside is the perfect summation of Earl Sweatshirt's career at this point: mysterious, uniquely original and bursting with emotion.
