Earl Sweatshirt - Doris (2013)

Such an interesting album cover, isn't it? The first time I ever saw it, I thought it was just Earl trying to be edgy again, but there's some looming sadness to it, it's really hard to describe.

Sometime after Earl Sweatshirt got sent to Samoa by his mother for issues with drugs, he was tracked down by Complex and there was a huge "FREE EARL" campaign amongst fans. When he returned, he returned to a fanbase bigger than he could imagine all dying to hear him rap about rape, murder, and the sort again, but with this album, Earl Sweatshirt gave them the finger, because he was depressed as shit and didn't want to be an edgelord anymore, leading to a very different album than what people were expecting at the time.

Earl's different. He's not the same person he was on 2010's "Earl" and that's very apparent when listening to this album, as he allows you to dig deeply into his mind and see what makes him tick/prevent him from ticking, with a good amount of tongue twisters that were loved on the aforementioned mixtape, but sadly, depression is tiring, and the guy just sounds tired as shit in a good portion of these songs to the point where you feel bad for him.

The beats aren't really that terribly notable overall this time around, with a good portion of them sounding like they were made by someone dicking around in FL Studio with the ordinary packs provided, but "Hoarse" sounds oddly.. Country-like? I don't know how to explain it, it's weird as shit. Even if the lot of them aren't that memorable, they all do an okay to a good job at making the right atmosphere for the tracks, such as "Centurion (Feat. Vince Staples)" which samples David Axelrod's "A Divine Image" to good results.

I've heard this album plenty of times, always wanting to love it, but only a few songs ever really stick with me afterwards, mainly just "Hive (Feat. Vincent Staples & Casey Veggies)" and "Whoa (Feat. Tyler, the Creator)" because they're pretty awesome in their own atmospherically dark kind of way, but of course, hearing RZA of Wu-Tang Clan fame say "I'll fuck the freckles off your face, bitch" as a hook in "Molasses (Feat. RZA)" is great but I would've preferred an actual verse from the Wu-Tang veteran. In fact, while we're on the subject of verses, Mac Miller delivers arguably the best guest-verse on the entire album in "Guild (Feat. Mac Miller)" and that's got me wanting to check out more of his work, so that's a positive, right?

Maybe one day this album will click with me, but today is not the day, and neither was yesterday, or the day before that, or the few years' worth of days before it. There are a lot of days in a year, you know? Like 365. Sometimes 366 in a leap year. That's like 1 x 366 = 366 and shit. That's some CRAZY math!!

6/10
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