At heart, Earl Sweatshirt is a rap nerd. Throughout our conversation about his new album Sick!, he can’t help but veer off into tangents about the wide-ranging mix of artists, albums, and songs that slip in and out of his personal rotation. Right before he hopped on Zoom from his Los Angeles home, for instance, he was transfixed by a YouTube video from the wildly prolific underground phenomenon Rxk Nephew. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen the internet that advanced,” he says about Nephew and his other half, Rx Papi, who collectively released around 500 songs across 2021. “They lived an entire rap career in a year.”
He then thinks back to the music that was in his life when he was completing Sick! to name a few: Bruiser Brigade chaos agent ZelooperZ (“That nigga is real hip-hop”), the churning regional street rap scenes in the DMV and Michigan (“Babyface Ray raps like a slick magician”), and foundational records like Mos Def’s Black on Both Sides, M.O.P.’s First Family 4 Life, and a rare 2004 remix compilation by the legendary producer Madlib (“He snapped—literally all the post-Knxwledge internet remixes comes out of that album”).
Describing his own record, the 27-year-old mulls over his words before landing on: “It’s like what’s going to happen if you give me the aux. I feel like I wasn’t always being true to that part of myself, but this is how I actually listen to music.”
Sick! is a 10-track, 24-minute heat check that skips between sounds and styles, from sample-drenched soul loops to interdimensional 808-heavy slickness. It’s the kind of purposefully scatterbrained record Earl wanted to challenge himself to make for a while, but he first had to pinpoint the areas where he needed to grow as an MC. Initially he was preparing a project called The People Could Fly, named after the Virginia Hamilton book of Black folk tales he used to read with his mother. But reality—including a global pandemic and becoming a father—changed his direction. “The pandemic pointed me to the necessity of there being some rhythmic backbone,” he says. “I had to use some drums, because you can’t be floating right now.” He alludes to masks, vaccines, syringes, isolation, and more throughout the album.
But ultimately Sick! feels lighter and more clear-headed compared to his 2018 opus Some Rap Songs and its follow-up, Feet of Clay, where Earl worked through the grief surrounding his father’s death. “My friends have bugged me about my super heavy music for years,” he says. “They were like, ‘Come on nigga, turn me up.’” While his writing is still full of tightly coiled rhymes that can sometimes leave you lightheaded, the record is brushed with shades of hope and optimism. His vocals sound cleaner too, in part thanks to JAY-Z’s longtime engineer Young Guru, who mixed the record.
Sick! also has a real bounce to it. There are smoky loops courtesy of veteran producer the Alchemist alongside a couple beats with pummeling percussion by Detroit beatmaker Black Noi$e. The intricate, stream-of-consciousness verses that have inspired an entire generation of like-minded rappers are still present, but he’s having fun with it, too. “5-0s on me like the Olympics/Pure gold, somethin’ told me, ‘Don’t mix it,’” he raps on “2010,” the type of technical yet playful bars that could make a battle rap crowd ooh and aah. Talking about the album’s ranging production and relative lyrical directness, Earl says, “I didn’t want to slam 17 loops down niggas throats and be mad when niggas don’t want to listen to some super dense shit. I really want to cover all the ground, be dexterous, and nerd out on this rap shit by finding the best of every style.”
Earl Sweatshirt: Whenever people find out something about me, it’s usually different from what they think they know about me. Because of the mystery I was shrouded in for so long, it gave people the room to project things on me that may or not be true. I’m sure they will be like, [mimics the voice of a congested rap fan] “Damn bro, Earl on a trap beat?”
That shit is fucking hilarious. You ever see kids who do those videos, like, “How Earl Sweatshirt Raps”? That type of shit used to get me tight, but it doesn’t anymore. I guess I’m getting older. I use it to my advantage now, too, and I can be in control of it like I am on this album. I’m breaking the fourth wall by even talking about it right now.
Nah, I only set myself up for high-percentage shots; it takes me a long time because I’m not going for everything. But you know what bust my head? Everything is moving faster and faster, like XXXTentacion came out and died between I Don’t Like Shit and Some Rap Songs. Shit takes me so long that a whole career can happen in between. It takes time to pattern it out, writing and chiseling.
But I did want to nudge myself out of my comfort zone. I had to locate where I was uncomfortable, and it was writing a song bar for bar, like a freestyle. The gray Sunday morning when I wrote “Sick!” was one of them moments. I was bored and didn’t know what the beat was going to do, and it was one clear motion. I was just like, “Nigga, come on, we got to do it,” until I did.
We still talk about that, because ultimately that’s the goal. I’m trying to make niggas laugh once. Give me anything. A smile. An eyebrow raise. A “Oh nah, nah, nah, you got to run this back.” For the past couple of years I’ve really been about brevity—not wasting a lot of time, but without being too obscure. I don’t want to make fortune cookies, I want to get to it.
Exactly. Michigan rap is like boxing. It’ll be jabs, then there will be this random hook or rib shot. That’s how Babyface Ray raps, he make shit that don’t even rhyme rhyme. That’s why Rio [Da Yung OG] is such a good fucking rapper. There will just be lines that stick with you. Remember when he said, “E, where the fuck is the drank at?” [laughs]
Jadakiss is a keeper of the word, a master of his craft. That’s what happens when you don’t put too much pressure on it and make it a love thing. From performing, researching, writing, and listening, make it a love thing. It’s the job, but not in a gross work way. In a spiritual sense.
He’s going to be mad I didn’t post up holding him on the back cover, while I’m shirtless and in front of a low rider. But that is my real-life son, man. I write about him and I have joints that will come out, but I just got to get a grip on him being here before sharing him with a huge audience. It’s a baby, bro. That’s my twin. He’s already guaranteed to have motherfuckers in his face, and I feel for cuz. It’s not a normal thing.
“Lye.”
I knew it. I was going to ask you that, but I knew it. You see, it’s not about him, but he’s involved. That shit is about when keeping it real goes wrong. Learning where the place for reckless honesty is when your agenda isn’t the most important anymore.
Lately I been thinking about the lessons I learned with my pops [the poet Keorapetse Kgositsile], and there’s definitely stuff with my son I don’t want to recreate, like where work intersects with your kids. But it was give and take with my pops. He was committed to being a keeper of the word. That’s what he had to do. At the time, I was looking for a more traditional relationship with him, but as I got older I understood him more. I remember around Feet of Clay, and during my grieving year, Mach [-Hommy] was around a lot. I was in it super bad, and he was like “How you gon’ understand some shit he did when he was 50, and you’re not 50?”
