Earl Sweatshirt, 'Live Laugh Love' Album Review

Earl Sweatshirt Remains Unburdened By the Powers That Be On Live Laugh Love

For a man who doesn’t subscribe to the rigor of celebrity, Earl Sweatshirt’s well-being draws an oversized level of interest. It’s a somewhat inevitable fate: Thebe Kgositsile’s rise to fame in Odd Future, the first internet famous rap group, practically guaranteed forum boards of past and present would stay interested in his every move. At just 16, Earl Sweatshirt caught the attention of every hot blog when his mother sent him to a rehabilitation school in Samoa and Odd Future’s fans began chanting “Free Earl” to anyone who would listen. His disappearance and the subsequent campaign placed an unfathomable spotlight on a then-teenager’s family life. Even now, a decade later—even after Earl Sweatshirt embraced his stardom, focused on his health, and started a family of his own—swarms of fans still regularly concern themselves with whether the man is doing okay. Live Laugh Love isn’t Earl Sweatshirt’s first guarantee of well-being, but it’s certainly his most explicit.

For years, this parasocial hand-wringing over Earl’s mental health was only exacerbated by his music—his early 2010s records were all deathly bleak. Among them, the cult favorite Solace EP frankly laid out the “tar pit of [his] ways.” The music fractured into rougher samples, less forthright rhythms, and rawer vocal takes. Lyrics explicitly referenced harrowing loneliness and suffocating grief, even predicting an early death. It felt like the product of a totally broken psyche undertaking an opaque creative endeavor. Earl then mingled with experimental jazz troupe Standing on the Corner and made Some Rap Songs, an album eschewing the aesthetic of the late 2010’s rap underground in favor of dense, hazy, and concise performances. His blatant disregard for drum kits, hooks, and common time signatures connected the sampling antics of MF DOOM to the mood-over-form impulses of MIKE and Medhane. Some Rap Songs endures not only as a benchmark of Earl’s artistic capacity, but as another stark look into the rapper’s rock bottom.

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Live Laugh Love doesn’t present Earl Sweatshirt as a new man. He references his past, both the good and bad, but, as he looks back on older works, trials, and victories, there isn’t a sense of regret, but acceptance—even a twinge of gratitude in the acknowledgement that the fires he once faced led to the picket fence he now enjoys. “TOURMALINE” swings with the romance of a Sinatra classic, as Earl intertwines his long journey towards self-betterment with his unabashed love for his wife. He inhabits the technique that made the words of Gil Scott-Heron immortal, weaponizing dire circumstances and transforming them into little splotches of hope. Whereas humor on Earl Sweatshirt’s earlier records squeezed mild amusement out of cynical circumstances, his comedy now feels lighthearted and rooted in joy. Comedian Mandal delivers an early monologue on “gsw vs sac,” riffing on the hedonism of Uber Eats over a wailing sample before formalizing the thesis of the record: “You ain’t runnin’ from nowhere but your own self, and that’s where you exactly need to be.” Few dudes have ever sounded this cool on a recording.

Sonically, Live Laugh Love feels like a collage of the spaces Earl Sweatshirt has spent the last five years studying. Creative partnerships with The Alchemist and billy woods associates Earl with traditionalists, but the snarling pens and raucous beats of mainline artists like Mobb Deep, Jadakiss, as well as their abstract contemporaries like Company Flow and Cannibal Ox, linger top of mind, too. Simultaneously, Earl’s extensive time alongside recent needle-movers like MIKE and the rest of his 10k crew grants Live Laugh Love its edge. Skeuomorphed soul and jazz samples sit beneath unorthodox yet catchy hooks, recalling Earl’s appearances with El Cousteau and Niontay, where some of his best 16s in recent years can be heard. Up-and-coming abstract beatmaker Theravada is unleashed on half of the tracks, while frequent collaborators Navy Blue and Black Noi$e take care of most others, offering a strong push-pull between Earl’s sonic past and present.

Even as his music descended into the avant-garde, Earl Sweatshirt retained an unparalleled ability to dance his bars around fractured music. That skill is on full display in Live Laugh Love as well. On “Gamma (need the <3),” where a direct string sample is grounded by the even rhythm of a hand drum, he starts lines on such a varied array of counts that the walking rhythm feels disorienting by the end. The album boasts a wide artillery of styles to boot: Earl raps on “Live” with a haze and lethargy that calls back to Solace and Song Rap Songs—except now, he’s using that sound to detail the security and safety he hopes to bring to his family. Immediately afterwards, he opens “Static” with the bounce and fire of a burgeoning rapper at a cutthroat open mic, a rapid fire energy he’s almost never brought to studio.

The variety displayed in such short spans testifies to the vast range of influences Earl draws upon. An album like Some Rap Songs granted him industry prestige and consumer faith and, as Sick! and VOIR DIRE already have this decade, Live Laugh Love confirms his legacy. With a reputation like that, Earl has earned his stripes—all while remaining totally unburdened by the typical powers that be. When he returns out of the blue with a 24-minute-long treasure trove like Live Laugh Love, you can’t help but pay attention. And you’re better off for doing so.

Earl Sweatshirt Remains Unburdened By the Powers That Be On Live Laugh Love

Earl’s blatant disregard for drum kits, hooks, and common time signatures connects the sampling antics of MF DOOM to the mood-over-form impulses of MIKE and Medhane, strengthening the argument that he is, in fact, still one of the coolest and most-inventive MCs alive.