FEET OF CLAY (Some More Rap Songs)

I have been following Earl Sweatshirt’s career religiously since his 2015 project I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside. Sure, I knew of him because I was a fan of Tyler, The Creator and Odd Future, and I listened to tracks he made that featured Frank Ocean and Vince Staples, but I initially became a fan more for his dark production than for his lyricism (which was an oversight looking back).

I was fascinated by the musical ideas that Earl presented in IDLSIDGO. 2015 was the start of my freshman year of college at the University of Washington and as it goes, I became increasingly stressed throughout the year. Listening to IDLSIDGO, I was surprised at how much the lyrics connected with me on a personal level. Before long I was a huge Earl Sweatshirt fan, eagerly awaiting his next project. The short project Solace released later in 2015 was enough to hold me over until December 2018, when Some Rap Songs dropped. I treasured that project from the start, falling in love with the phenomenal avant-garde post hip-hop instrumentals. It was great to hear Earl reconcile himself, particularly on my favourite track on the album, ‘Azucar’.

After this release, I was not expecting a new project from Earl to come any time soon. But then he announced a surprise EP called Feet of Clay. I knew I had to listen to it as soon as it dropped. That’s what I did. I listened once, I listened twice, I listened 10 times and I realised hours had passed without even feeling it. I was again surprised by the instrumentals, which were even more free form than Some Rap Songs, especially on ‘EAST’, a track which samples a classic Arabic song. Earl brings back his signature loose flow that feels like it’s both on time and out of sync. And not in a jarring Blueface way, Earl’s style of rapping feels indefinitely more calculated - as if he is interpreting the freeform instrumentals in his rhyme schemes, making his voice a supplementary instrument in and of itself.

The EP starts off strong with ‘74’ where Earl talks about how he has been living since SRS whilst taking shots at weak artists and record label slaves. The aforementioned ‘EAST’ sees him speak on his substance abuse and how society nowadays is obsessed with instant gratification. He also includes a great metaphor about trying to extract light from his stardom but not being able to as his star status is a result of his dark lyrics. We get Alchemist production on ‘MTOMB’ and it shows. The beat is a fantastic slow jazzy loop with soul vocal samples layered on top. Earl raps about his father’s death on this track whilst calling back the classic Dizzee Rascal album Boy in Da Corner. Earl continues the theme of loss on ‘OD’, rapping about the loss of his friend Mac Miller to an overdose.

On the next track, ‘EL TORO COMBO MEAL’, MAVI delivers a feature with a more focused style of rapping than Earl Sweatshirt, which leads me to an important point: Earl has become so well loved as a rapper that a feature on his project at this point lends significant popularity. Indeed, MAVI has rightfully gotten more recognition since this EP dropped, and the same can be said for Mach-Hommy for his feature on ‘4N’. Earl has proclaimed that Mach is his favourite rapper (as opposed to MF DOOM who was mentioned previously by Earl) and he brings his A-game on ‘4N’. That track, which is the last of the album, and ‘TISK TISK/COOKIES’ both have instrumentals very typical of the lo-fi, abstract hip-hop subgenre that Earl has pioneered (see artists such as MIKE, Medhane and Slauson Malone, as well as MAVI and Mach-Hommy).

All in all, I really enjoyed this project and I am definitely going to keep listening to it for a very long time. I strongly recommend this EP to Earl Sweatshirt fans. To people who have never tried out any of Earl Sweatshirt’s music, I suggest starting with I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside first to see how you like it and if you do, I encourage you to listen to the rest of his discography.