By Ian Eisenbrand

The recent release of Earl Sweatshirt’s sixth album brings medicine to an infirm world by finding strength within fragile times.

Thebe Kgositsile adopted the pseudonym Earl Sweatshirt while his career initially ignited with sparks of youthful and brash hip-hop collective Odd Future. The artist was still a teenager when Odd Future offered him the opportunity to put out his work, with persistent themes swirling around Sweatshirt’s worn mental health and drug abuse setting early in his career. As he continued to develop in his creativity, Sweatshirt’s discourse regarding his perspective in the midst of both the world around him and his often debihilated mental health remained constant through each of his projects. The unwavering nature of Earl Sweatshirt’s grizzled exhibitions alongside his evolving talents as a poet and musician over the past decade formed the basis for a profound investment amongst Sweatshirt’s audience. Since Sweatshirt’s most recent projects release in 2018 and 2019, the world has been left in a historically ravaging global pandemic and pervasive turmoil worldwide; such a context welcomes the return of Earl Sweatshirt in SICK!, with audiences eager to receive an intimate look into the beloved poet’s world once again. 

SICK! is a project that leans heavily on Earl Sweatshirt’s incredibly unique style as a poet and songwriter. Throughout the track list, Earl Sweatshirt chooses to reside within the graying margins of lucid honesty within his perspective and obscuring complexities of his poetic delivery. As he juggles between shifting rhyme schemes and flows, Sweatshirt stretches his poetic capacity on tracks such as “Lye” where he facilitates subtle entendres by contrasting abstract religious excerpts and his crippling drug use. The careful weavings of Sweatshirt’s poetry tie each song together, with intricate webs marking his central philosophy across the album. Featured artists also offer a refreshing presence in the pockets they occupy, with strong verses from both Armand Hammer and Zelooperz. 

Even with the lyrical focus of the project, SICK!’s production still looks to expand beyond Sweatshirt’s already infamously exploratory production style. Tracks such as “Titanic” and “2010” offer bouncing and hypnotic drum patterns laced with quirky synth leads with production strongly aligned with mainstream hip-hop. These instrumentals hold a discernible shift from the alternative, abstract, and often purposefully disjointed sounds of Earl Sweatshirt’s previous work. Nevertheless, Sweatshirt still realizes opportunities for his off-center sound with lo-fi horn sections, fragmented and twinkling keys, and chopped soul samples on tracks like “God Laughs” and “Fire in the Hole.” In the shaping of SICK!’s sonic landscape, two producers received a large portion of production credits. Black Noi$e, a frequent collaborator with Earl Sweatshirt before the release of SICK!, and acclaimed producer The Alchemist account for six of the ten tracks on the album. More than any other facet of the project, the mainstream approach to its production makes for Earl Sweatshirt’s most easily accessible work for new audiences. Still, Sweatshirt effectively maintains authenticity in this shift as he spreads his wings beyond their known range of motion before SICK!’s release. 

Blooming from the roots of his previous albums, Earl Sweatshirt presents central themes surrounding the days lost within the pandemic alongside his personal struggles over SICK!’s runtime. Earl Sweatshirt bares his skin on SICK!, revealing a dehydrated spirit withered by isolation in the desert created by the woes of his past drug abuse and feeble mental state. Nonetheless, Sweatshirt holds a clear aversion to considering this baggage with frames of either nostalgic idealism or stinging cynicism, pinning both as fruitless ends. Instead, Sweatshirt glues these lost moments together at their deepest fractures, forming this reflection not to search and critique the flaws in its skin, but to hold it as a means to grow beyond the cracks. In this, the adhesive used to bind the shards is found in the fractures themselves, with the lessons learned from his mistakes grounding his ability to push past them. As similar fragmentation spreads for millions worldwide, such a reasoning may serve as a form of solace to those who chose to embrace it.  

SICK! refuses to skirt away from the dark and unseen corners of the space it occupies. Instead, it looks to remove the blinds, letting rays of light soak into the room. The truth found in this light is uncured, raw, and tender to the touch. The ruminations of Earl Sweatshirt’s mind do not offer an innate remedy to these wounds. Alternatively, they attempt to offer an antibody in the hopes of forming immunity within the chaos itself. It is not a perfect science, nor has it been produced without its fair share of cracks in the mirror in Sweatshirt's own life. However, SICK! is a stinging medicine that permits the necessary burns for new gardens to grow. 

In light of SICK!’s release, Earl Sweatshirt is also now on tour with Action Bronson. The tour stretches across the United States over the course of 2022 until early March, with sets in New York City on February 16 and 17.