Earl Sweatshirt - I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside

Earl Sweatshirt's Previous album, Doris, from 2013, was a breakthrough for the artist, critically if not commercially. Sweatshirt is part of the rap collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, a group in which most of their 15 members have remained faceless outside of the collective. Odd Future, and their appointed leader, Tyler, The Creator, have made a career out of aggressive music - sounding like they're testing how ugly and depraved they can go without losing listeners. And Sweatshirt sounded like this for a while, too: Doris was the sound of dead end suburbia, with Sweatshirt's timid voice reveling in a life of marijuana and broken childhood. Of course critics ate it up: Sweatshirt has the skinny underdog look down tight. I couldn't tell you why I disliked Doris so much; like other critically acclaimed albums, I played it on repeat hoping to catch glimpse of the spark others had seen, but to no avail. I liked Sweatshirt, he wore his vulnerability on his sleeve, but Doris was steeped in Odd Future's loopy vibes, and covered in guest stars that sometimes had no reason to be there.

Sweatshirt's second studio album, I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside, is nothing but Earl Sweatshirt, which, if you're familiar with the rapper's style, should be enough to tell you if you'll like this one. He raps "I've been alone in my shit for the longest": Earl is stuck in his own head. After the last album, he found fame; now all he can write about is getting high and getting pussy. The production is so dour and downbeat that even Sweatshirt's voice sounds like it's cutting through the speakers. His flow has always been aggressive without being fast or angry, and the music too is built on slow beats - on "Faucet", the beat sounds like a ringing church bell, the chimes of death hanging over his every word. This is production so focused and purposeful it'll suck the air out of any room you play it in. There is few guest stars and fewer places where Earl's influences are clear, the music is too bare bones in places to have any influences. He raps "I spent the day drinking and missing my grandmother" - a lot of the album involves just sitting with Sweatshirt's thoughts, or listening to him wallowing in them.

The tone is dark, sometimes to the point of suicidal, and painfully self-conscious; usually, with albums like this, I'd say the music was for a mood piece or best listened to alone, and likely as a whole set, but I've had "Faucet" on continual repeat since I first heard it. There's nothing bouncy or fun to this music, but the words have meaning. Sweatshirt doesn't see the exotic nature of going on tour - to him it's nothing but dealing with "truck stop racists". While Sweatshirt's complaining about his own golden chains it's hard not to think about Drake, and the goldmine of emotional, self questioning rap that Drake opened up. This little sub-genre can be fantastic: the dramatic woes of the rich and famous played out with hauntingly articulate rap. And its popularity is at a high right now - vulnerability as a sort of game. Even Drake, with his endless self-criticism has turned his problems into a game. Sweatshirt doesn't feel like that (not yet, anyway), when he raps "Fame is the culprit who give me drugs without owing cash, Sipping 'til I melt, Never trying me, I'm diving, falling victim to myself, Middle finger to the help" the words resound in your ears, and it's the emotion you're there for, not the beat, not anything else. One might guess that's the reason Sweatshirt's felt the need to make the most minimalistic rap album possible: to know that his words have meaning, and that he is worth all the fuss, not his band or his producers, just him.

The music is inherently ugly. On the best track, "AM", guest star Wiki raps "Nineteen, still gettin' kicked out the crib, Ripped off my bib, spit out my food, hiccup and piss". It's an ugly image, but not malicious or mean, like, say Tyler, The Creator. It's all directed inwards, as is the whole album. I doubt there's big appeal for these tracks: if you do go outside, or you've forgotten you don't like shit, then you won't find much here. But there's gems to be found. At points on the album it can sound like we are hearing Sweatshirt's conscience talking to him; a similar thing is done on Kendrick Lamar's latest album, To Pimp A Butterfly, an album just as weird and violent, but also much wider in its sound so surely headed for greater success. Sweatshirt's album is all about personal demons - it deals frequently with Sweatshirt's breakup with Mallory Llewellyn and his troubled relationship with his mother - while Kendrick's album is a political album (admittedly driven by a personal anger). It sounds like a fight through black history. As well as his conscience, Lamar had an army of guest stars, he'd brought the boys, even 2Pac showed up from beyond the grave on the final track to aid Lamar's cause; Sweatshirt, by comparison, is fighting his fight alone.