As unambitious as ever, “SICK!” is a brisk, withdrawn affair from Earl Sweatshirt. He’s labelled the album a humble capsule of his COVID-19 and lockdown thoughts. If you treat it that way, and nothing more, it’s deceptively intricate and gorgeously understated.
7.7
Few rappers have endured the career trajectory of Earl Sweatshirt. An immortalised stint in the rap collective Odd Future and some time in exile in Samoa stand out in particular. Already something of a rap legend, he continues to exist on the fringes of rap with a devout, cultish fanbase.
But whereas Tyler, The Creator and Vince Staples took that young, volatile stardom and massaged it into fully-fledged pop ubiquity, Earl has deviated. He’s watched sing-song and trap rappers dominate the airways whilst he’s gleefully fallen further within himself.
That descent seemed to start around the damp, quietly excellent I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside and continued with Some Rap Songs and especially Feet of Clay. Whereas others were attending high-profile interviews and featuring in Sprite commercials, the child of a law professor and a poet started taking heavier hits from his spliffs and slinking into the darker corners of his bedroom.
What you think of that transition will determine what you think of SICK! This is not an album trying to gain mass appeal, nor will it. Rather, it’s a brisk 24-minute affair with a smattering of crackling, looping tracks over classical hip-hop production. But there is still real satisfaction and joy to be extracted from a piece like this if you’re keen to find it. That’s largely due to the precocious, unparalleled talents of Sweatshirt. He’s like a technically-brilliant athlete who you just wish would link up with his teammates a bit more often and maybe grab a drink with them after practice. At the same time, you don’t want to mess with his rhythm.
Earl practices on his own time. Sweatshirt albums feel less like melodic experiences and more like choppy dreams. There are sparks of insight nestled within seemingly-innocuous tracks. On the brief “God Laughs”, Sweatshirt speaks honestly about his now-deceased, dementia-ridden grandfather and his funeral – “through his brain getting chopped away at daily/his body on a road where his mind failed and funeral whaled us/no Beluga, no Bob, just mood swingin”. Elsewhere he’s capable of such unique evocative imagery when discussing his renewed faith in God on “Lye” – “toss the sword back into the vines/callin’ out for Lord, looking low and high/finally found it at the core of my dimming fire”. No one would doubt his father was a poet.
Earl can be a frustrating presence. Someone with such talent is undoubtedly capable of an epic, world-beating album. You get a brief sense of that on the gorgeous album closer, “Fire In The Hole” (which is the only track with a legitimate chorus). This is the same rapper who once drew unsolicited praise from Kendrick Lamar. It’s apparent that Earl isn’t particularly interested in any of that, preferring to treat his albums more as glimpses into his late-night thoughts than some colourful landscape of his worldview. He has labelled SICK! a humble capsule of his thoughts amidst COVID-19 and repeated lockdowns. If you treat it that way, you’ll find it deceptively intricate and gorgeously understated. It’s a disservice to the artist to treat it as anything more.
THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL 