Happy 10th Anniversary to Earl Sweatshirt’s debut album Doris, originally released August 20, 2013.
In the opening seconds of Earl Sweatshirt’s “Burgundy,” he is admonished by friend and collaborator Vince Staples. Amidst triumphant horns, Staples charges, “Why you so depressed and sad all the time like a little bitch? What's the problem, man? N****s want to hear you rap. Don't nobody care about how you feel. We want raps, n***a.” After the first verse, another distorted, disembodied voice drones, “I heard you back: I need them raps, n***a. I need the verse, I don’t care about what you going through or what you gotta do n***a, I need bars: sixteen of ’em."
These sentiments are a recurring theme on Doris, the full-length debut by Thebe “Earl Sweatshirt” Kgositsile, released a decade ago. It doesn’t matter what trauma he has endured, things he has experienced, or lessons that he has learned: there’s always going to be a vocal section of his fanbase that’s going to want him to deliver a similar version of what he gave them when he was a wild 16-year-old. Doris is about Earl learning to incorporate all of these parts of his life while he functions as an adult.
Earl Sweatshirt earned his fame as a member of the Odd Future collective, one of the great talent incubators of the 21st century. Fronted by multi-GRAMMY winning rapper/artist/producer Tyler, the Creator, the crew has churned out a massive roll call of talented individuals across many musical genres and disciplines. Their ranks included pop superstars, alternative R&B groups, producers/songwriters, and talented emcees, as well as skateboarders, DJs, and visual artists.
Odd Future first garnered attention in the late ’00s through their brash approach to music. They were completely unafraid of being confrontational and offensive, recording material and producing videos that relied heavily on shock value. Their attitude was built on their youth, as most, if not all, of the members of the collective were either teenagers or in their early twenties. During a period where hip-hop had become “The Establishment,” Odd Future was a necessary shock to the system, bringing back an air of chaos and danger that was often missing in the music.
Earl initially connected with Tyler and Odd Future through Myspace, back when that was a perfectly reasonable way for someone to interact with their peers. Earl soon entered the Odd Future fold, and released the EARL mixtape (2010), primarily produced by Tyler.
EARL sounded like what you’d expect an extremely talented, yet rough-around-the-edges 16-year old to make in the early 2010s. It featured Earl’s unpolished thoughts as a youth getting into some questionable shit. It’s perhaps best known for the video of its title track, where Earl and the rest of the Odd Future collective imbibe an unholy cocktail of narcotics then wild out through the streets of Los Angeles, with members of the crew ending up vomiting, bleeding, or both. But Earl expressed a lot of genuine sentiments of what it was like to be young in Los Angeles during the first decade of this century.
As Earl’s first official full-length album, Doris is a more refined project. Much like many of the other members of Odd Future, Earl was really hitting his stride during the 2012/2013 era, as this turned out to be the group’s most collectively fertile period creatively. Doris feels like an accurate portrayal of young man still trying to find his way in life.
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Earl eases up on shock value for its own sake, while still maintaining his edge as a lyricist. Throughout the project, he struggles to cope with the death of his grandmother (the nominal Doris), his issues with substance abuse, his complicated relationship with his father, and his misgivings about pursuing a career in hip-hop. He delves into complicated issues that many spend years in therapy trying to unpack, but manages to compile into Doris’ relatively brief 44-minute runtime. It’s a raw, often uncomfortable performance, but it’s one that established him as one of the most talented emcees of his generation.
Musically, Doris sounded different than much of the material of the era, eschewing both pop sensibilities and traditional hip-hop production. While Earl enlists a host of producers to fortify the album’s sound, he also works behind the boards for a good chunk of the project as well. Very little of Doris’ backdrop is conventional, but it certainly is at peace with the album’s subject matter.
Much of Doris’ prelude is framed by Earl’s attendance at a retreat school for at-risk youth. Many thorough articles have been written about Earl’s time at the academy, located in Samoa, and his mother’s decision to send him there, so I’ll spare you the lengthy details. Shortly after turning 18, he returned to Los Angeles in early 2012, and soon resumed recording music with Odd Future. He contributed a memorable verse on “Oldie,” a sprawling posse cut on their Odd Future Vol. 2 compilation (2012) and filmed an appearance in the song’s notoriously off-the-cuff video.
The period of his life before being sent to Samoa informs the tone of Doris. “Chum,” the album’s first single, portrays his complex immediate thoughts after his return stateside. Produced by himself and the Christian Rich production team, Earl tries to reconcile his feelings of emptiness with reflections of his troubled past, rapping, “Too black for the white kids, and too white for the blacks / From honor roll to cracking locks up off them bicycle racks / I’m indecisive, I’m scatterbrained, and I’m frightened / It’s evident in them eyes, where he hiding all them icicles at.” Later, he confesses that all of the stress of trying to re-adapt to life stateside and the subsequent press coverage put further strain on his relationship with his mother and had him ready to quit rapping.
These themes are also central to the aforementioned “Burgundy,” produced by The Neptunes. Earl vents throughout the song, rapping, “N***a, I’m about to relish in this anguish, and I'm stressing over payment / So don’t tell me that I made it; only relatively famous.” According to an NPR interview with him and Vince Staples conducted by A Tribe Called Quest’s Ali Shaheed Muhammed, the song was inspired by Earl’s struggles with his record label while recording Doris, and the general antipathy that he set in after returning home.
Earl frequently collaborates with members of the Odd Future crew on Doris, many of whom were also releasing great material during this period. The swirling “20 Wave Caps” features the first of three exuberant guest appearances by Domo Genesis, one of the more underappreciated members of the crew. Earl teams with Frank Ocean, who delivers an outstanding verse, on “Sunday.” Earl considered the self-produced track his best creation on Doris.
Earl’s “big brother” Tyler produces and appears on two tracks on Doris. “Whoa,” the album’s second single, features Tyler offering the reverse of the aforementioned “Burgundy” intro, reminding that just because Earl does rhyme about his feelings, doesn’t mean he can’t still rip in on the mic. Earl backs up these sentiments, giving a masterful, syllable-bending performance marked by complex cadences and dizzyingly dense verses. He raps, “Still in the business of smacking up little rappers with / Racquets you play tennis with, hated for bank lifting / And spraying then hide away in the shade of his maimed innocence / Suitcase scented with haze and fileted sentences.” The performance evokes MF DOOM, one of Earl’s central influences and idols.
“Sasquatch” is the closest Doris gets to late ’00s/early ’10s shock-value era Odd Future. With his opening verse, Tyler weaves in plans to abduct young One Direction fans with references to James and The Giant Peach, all while “kicking it with Nak and that n***a from Green Mile.” For his part, Earl describes himself and his “squadron of lost souls” stumbling through the streets of Los Angeles, blasted out of their gourds, creating bedlam. The song plays like a tongue-in-cheek caricature of what fans expect of them, with an extra layer of tragic self-awareness.
One of Doris’ greatest virtues is Earl and his collaborators’ ability to create a disconcerting mood, mirroring the darkness behind the lyrics. “Hive,” the album’s third single, is an ominous, sinister endeavor, produced by Odd Future-affiliated beat-maker Matt Martians. As twisted choral vocals buzz throughout the track, Earl delivers a pair of expertly crafted verses with an unsettling detachment. Vince Staples closes the song with a star-making performance, contributing a 32-bar verse that Earl has said only took him 15 minutes to write.
“Molasses” is a RZA-helmed romp, as he hooks up a dusty guitar and vibraphone sample to create one of his best productions in years. In the NPR interview, Earl and Staples described the surreal studio session with the Wu-Tang’s spiritual leader, where, after consuming fried chicken and smoking a blunt, he spoke with them for four hours straight. He then recorded a 12-minute freestyle. They incorporated bits of his winding performance into the finished product as part of the introduction and ad-libs. Earl himself kicks a remarkable verse, rapping, “Knife to the trachea, spit scabies and bet / The label don’t like me, but they pay me a grip.”
Earl slows things to a crawl on “Guild,” a duet with him and Mac Miller (R.I.P.), who helped mentor Earl and many of the other up-and-coming emcees during the early ’00s. Earl pitches down their vocals, making their verses practically crawl from their throats. Earl adds to his songs’ ambience by simply having a sore throat on the appropriately titled “Hoarse.” Produced by the experimental funk/jazz band BadBadNotGood, the song is dark and ominous, with Earl rapping in a monotone croak. “Dismissed, feel it in that saturated cranium,” he states. “Heavy as insurance off a spanking-new laser gun / Crazy heart, hazy lung, making art, raking funds / Crowd going dumb like Palin’s son.”
The honesty and genuine pathos heard throughout Doris makes it arguably Earl’s best album of his career. The album still resonates a decade later, and it’s still beloved by many. He seems to be aware of the album’s impact and scheduled a limited number of anniversary performances to celebrate its creation. I imagine the heaviness of much of the album’s subject matter may be why he only scheduled four concerts in total.
Regardless, Doris is an artistic triumph where he explores his issues on his own terms, and still shows why he was a more adept emcee than many of his contemporaries. Why choose between feelings and “bars” when you can do both?
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