Jon Caramanica at the New York Times tells the ballad of Earl Sweatshirt, which has been relatively unsung since the young rapper’s return from Samoa earlier this year. He talks to Earl, Clancy, Tyler, and everyone in between. This is the first time we’ve heard from his mom since Kelefa Sanneh’s New Yorker piece last year. Check out an excerpt below and the full article here.
He’ll have his own imprint, Tan Cressida, to be distributed through Columbia. That places him in the Sony system alongside Odd Future, which was one of his priorities. He turned down offers with significantly higher advances and made sure that his contract allowed him to put the Odd Future logo on his albums. “I want it to look seamless,” he said. As for his mother’s concerns, “She knows she’s got nothing to worry about.”
There still hasn’t been any communication between Ms. Harris and Odd Future. “I don’t view me as being the relevant person in all this,” she said, though she remains a potent behind-the-scenes force.
There are still joint therapy sessions with his mother, to hammer out the dents in that relationship. “I don’t spend as much time at home as I necessarily should be,” he admitted. “I know I’m not as considerate as I should be.” The day after he groaned about traveling with her to see André 3000, he reconsidered his angst. “That was the prejudice I was talking about,” he said. “When I got in the car with her, it was, like, fine.”
Whether he’ll branch out as a solo star or become part of the Odd Future traveling road show remains to be seen. He made his live debut at the crew’s album release concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York in March.
His way of coping with re-entry has been decidedly low key: whiling away hours at the Odd Future store, skating, making music with everyone in the crew. At one point he joked that he has to stop wearing the five-panel camp hats that are something of a crew trademark.
He wants to work on three projects: his solo major-label debut, a collaboration with the producer Matt Martians and EarlWolf, a long-planned collaboration with Tyler. Of “Earl,” the song that made him a star, he said, “There’s not a time I want to listen to that,” describing it as sounding “like you skinned your knee.”
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