Earl Sweatshirt: "Grief"

Don’t mind Earl, he’s just talking it out, punching air holes into the suffocating darkness. The walls are closing in; his anxiety’s reached a catastrophic peak. We’re talking “Jack Nicholson snowed in at the Overlook Hotel” type shit here. He ain’t been outside in a minute.

“Grief” is the writhing first single from the rapper’s forthcoming I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside. Here, Earl cloaks himself in psychosis, seemingly at odds with his own demons. On the surface, it’s tough to tell what’s bugging him: His own addictions, maybe. Lately, he’s been panicking a lot. Is it his record label’s fault? Who knows.

Earl channels all that confliction into a seething stream of thought, slathered haphazardly over a sludgy, lo-fi instrumental. The music speaks to the angst Earl addressed on Doris, his impressive first album. Earl’s anger grows more disjointed as the track plays. He takes aim at rappers biting his style. He’s thinking about his grandma. With all that going on, who has time to go outside?

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