FEET OF CLAY

If you’d said in 2014 that by 2019 Earl Sweatshirt, a scrawny kid from Odd Future, would be one of the most well-regarded hip hop artists, nobody would have taken it seriously. But after 2018’s Some Rap Songs, it has become evident that it’s true, and the new EP proves it.

As with the free-jazz innovators of the 1960s, Sweatshirt continually pushes against the notion that rap music requires any formulas at all.

The seven tracks represent different, curious branches extending out from the seeds planted by Some Rap Songs, each reaching for new ideas and switching gears when another thought arrives. It continues Sweatshirt's streak as an innovator and as one of the more compelling artists of his time.

Earl’s choose-your-own-adventure raps belie the precision of his lyrics. His dense words-per-second ratio, as well as the fluid, associative logic that guides Feet of Clay, makes each song appear as a bottled capsule of unfiltered stream-of-consciousness that spills out of him like water from an Artesian well.

The brevity and density of the album, coupled with the unique production, makes it seem like an epilogue to ‘Some Rap Songs’. Earl Sweatshirt has made another project that listeners will scrutinise and dissect repeatedly. It’s further proof that Earl Sweatshirt is a generational talent.

There’s the sense that the artist is using this record as a transitionary vehicle, a space where he can blend familiar themes with unfamiliar sounds, adopt different lyrical approaches and mix them with different styles of production and instrumentation. Such an effort is testament to Sweatshirt’s status as one of the foremost artists of the hip-hop avant-garde.

As abrasive as it feels, it’s a lyrically rewarding payoff for listeners who choose to sift through the muddle and explore a high-brow exercise into poetry. Otherwise, old Odd Future fans and casual Hip-Hop listeners will be turned off by its off-putting and annoyingly grating aesthetics.

The only real thing separating this from Some Rap Songs is the lack of duration and inter-song flow; Earl's last album deserved those slightly silly Abbey Road nods as much as Jeff Rosenstock's WORRY. did, whereas FEET OF CLAY plays as self-contained little musings that seem to flutter in and out as a radio channel changes.

Some Rap Songs was a few hairs more rewarding in this mode, but Earl Sweatshirt’s cemented a signature mood and production style unlike anyone else’s, and since he’s growing more thoughtful every year, there’s good reason to believe he’ll perfect it. Unfortunately, it also seems that every year he’s growing more depressed as well.