Rap album about self-awareness is jt a common product. Candor has also been absent from hip hop culture for a long time. Lyrics about prison you have created in your own mind is also far from commercial music scene, If we leave MF Doom and few other artists aside. When you run into something like that, you run into true refreshment, although we are talking about something that is not so easy to listen to.
I Don't Like Shit, I don't Go Outside is one of the darkest and sincerest hip hop albums I have ha s chance to hear. Every word is shaped with twisted tones that lead you directly to depression. Considering that Earl Sweatshirt canceled his 2014 tour because he was emotionally and psychologically on the verge, this album did not come as a surprise. Good portion of it is high quality production done by Earl himself under the alias RandomBlackDude. Industrial samples and unconventional beats are the core of the compact, non-commercial rap record. It is a record of a generation who is choking on hallucinations of the global village. His mood dictates the atmosphere; it is a depression of glamour and melancholy that is distant from the subject, but close to the listener. I don't feel like analyzing each song, but definitely pay attention to Huey, Grief, and Wool. This is the album that you eat at one bite, but then you replay it to decipher the lyrics.
What is all about? It is about a man who is opening himself and giving us his darkest fears, doubts and emotions while simultaneously pushing them away. When he opens up, Earl throws temper tantrum of his personal frustrations, neurosis, paranoias and alienation from the world that is telling you that If you are young, you are suppose to be happy. At the same time, while offering his intimacy on the silver plate, he is letting us know that his problems are only his and that he feels comfortable in symbiosis with his demons.
Ghetto State Of Mind reflects the meaning of ghetto. It is not only a geographical location characterized by poverty. It is a state of mind. Ghetto is a consciousness about the prison you're in. It is a consciousness without pink glasses and instagram filters. This consciousness has nothing to do with finances; you can have the money or not have it; you can be born in high class family of intelectuals or in the family of extremely low socioeconomic status. It doesn't matter.
Someone posts photos from the South American surfs and parties and Berlin while someone else is loving in on the tenth floor of a skyscraper that was now painted since 1978. The first one is the slave of the banks, while the other one struggles. The point is in the perception of what surrounds us and social roles that are prescribed to us. It is also about social roles we have decided to play.
What do Afro-American adolescent from LA who went to private school and kid from Eastern European middle-of-nowhere industrial city have in common? The perception of the world and frustrations. Earl is representative of the social structures that are not able to figure it out in the global society. He does not invite you for revolution. He invites you smoke a joint with him and allievate the pain for a brief moment. This album is the ultimate hip-hop poetry, and I would choose it over any Kendrick Lamar's record.
