Earl and guest rapper Armand Hammer glide effortlessly over the production, with Earl coming to terms with the tragedies in his life and choosing to remain true to himself. Standout tracks include the excellent “Tabula Rasa,” a posse cut over an ethereal looping piano beat with a vocal sample that elicits feelings of nostalgia. “Sick!” feels like Earl is more confident in himself than ever before. Compared to the sometimes muffled and subdued mixing that made up previous works. This diversity of sounds makes “Sick!” feel like a rewarding listen even though it’s only ten tracks. Stylistically, both contain some of the stylistic looping production popularized by the sLUms collective that gave SRS its signature dark and claustrophobic feeling not as present on “Sick!” Tracks like “Titanic” feature instrumentals that wouldn’t be out of place on a trap album. “Sick!” follows up Earl’s magnum opus “Some Rap Songs” in a somewhat different direction. Lines like “Asymptomatic, but I get sick of the delays” sound cryptic enough that one could believe he would’ve written this without the pandemic. In this way, “Sick!” will age gracefully relative to many of its contemporaries. Thematically, while “Sick!” does talk about the pandemic, it does so in a way that isn’t too on the nose, forgoing the cringy one-liners and punchlines that pervaded lyrics throughout the last two years. After four years since his last studio album, Sweatshirt proves that he still hasn’t lost his edge across the album’s 24-minute runtime. “ Sick! ” is Sweatshirt’s latest album, recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic as a reflection of the chaos that was going on all across the world. His last studio album and experimental masterpiece “Some Rap Songs” saw Earl at his most abstract and depressed, rapping over looping samples of soul beats while addressing his grief at his father’s passing.įollowing that, he released “Feet of Clay” EP, which kept up the depressing mood of its predecessors while also diving into even more off-kilter production, such as on the now-infamous “EAST.” Sweatshirt’s music is infamous for its cryptic, often complex lyrics that describe his complicated feelings of grief. His longest record is about 44 minutes, with most of his projects being less than 30 minutes in length. Sweatshirt’s albums feature tons of lyrical density while never overstaying their welcome. Ever since his rap career started at 16, he’s fostered a fanbase enamored with his cryptic and depressing lyrics. Earl Sweatshirt isn’t a rapper who wastes time.
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