Review Summary: Earl finds his place. The rest of Odd Future can stay outside.
It comes without question that March of 2015 has been one of the more monstrous months in the music community in quite some time. It may seem important now, but in context this is arbitrary, and in some cases causes a lazy focus change into the bigger picture, rather than hearing for the significance of each record’s lasting quality on their own. This record seems to be a prime example. “Doris” was a relative success, but the album seemed to calm down the hype machine for Earl Sweatshirt, as listeners seemed to believe that he was going in a relatively predictable direction. This caused Earl’s sophomore studio effort to be released in a somewhat low-key manner, and while being surrounded by all the hugely awaited albums around the same time, it only seemed to bury the album even more so. The powerful messages on Kendrick’s behemoth “To Pimp a Butterfly” more than likely will ring for years to come (deservingly so), but records like “I Don’t Like ***, I Don’t Go Outside” deserve to be dissected in the same manner, and not just studied at surface level.
What Earl Sweatshirt gives us here on the record can be very easy to gloss over. This album at first glance seems pretty by the numbers for Earl, but with some significant strides in production quality. The production seems to have abandoned the very clean instrumentals on “Doris” for a clunky, almost ugly sounding production style, but it ends up benefitting Earl greatly. The beats on this record create perfect moods for each track, most notably the dark, lost in depression mood in “Grief” as well as the apathetically beautiful beat on “Faucet”. This album also is very bass heavy, but rather than using this for a few cheap banger beats, the album focuses consistently on its atmosphere it has created for itself. This record is also tied together wonderfully by beautifully atmospheric sounding interludes at the ends of most songs that usually are accompanied with a lo-fi beat on top of it, adding to the aesthetic of this wonderfully ugly record.
Earl was clearly focused on creating an atmosphere for this record, and making big jumps in his production ability in the process, but the gold in this record still lies within Earl’s rapping. At first, he doesn’t seem to be very focused on this record, other than him sounding more awake and ambitious with his delivery, especially on “DNA”. With more listens, however, it is clear that Earl is more focused than he was on “Doris”, and he tells some extremely depressing stories in the process. Whether it be his recent ugly breakup with his girlfriend (“Mantra”), being lost and alone with no comfort zone to return to (“Faucet”), being extraordinarily underweight and growing sick because of it (“Grief”), Earl doesn’t exactly have a positive outlook on this record. This doesn’t change the fact that Earl has also grown much more ambitiously lyrically, and has also seemed to have developed a niche in the process.
Features were a big problem on “Doris”. They often overshadowed Earl, or, most of the time, were completely underwhelming. On this record, the features seem to be few and far in between. The Vince Staples feature on “Wool” is easily the most impressive, the Wiki and Da$h feature don’t hurt the record, but it’s the Na’kel feature where things get cloudy. At first glance, seeing this feature made me think it would be another throwaway banger track (since Na’kel is just a friend of Earls, and clearly not a rapper), and it made me think Earl was retreating back to his Odd Future ways. Apparently that was its original intentions, but what I got instead was, while sloppy, actually very heartfelt and sad. The feature turned into a verse about the passing of one of Na’kel’s closest friends, which apparently had been shot and killed during the recording of the album. While it’s easily the weakest verse on the album, it shows true emotion, and I can’t fault it for that.
This record is not Earl’s magnum opus. It’s not “To Pimp a Butterfly”, but it doesn’t try to be. This record is Earl at some of his darkest moments in life, and him truly bringing it to his music. Not every song is as interesting as the rest, and sometimes the instrumentals can be a little too ugly, but this is a very solid record that has me very excited for the future of Earl Sweatshirt.
8.4/10
