Hey. Hey you? Are you an Earl Sweatshirt fan?

If you answered yes or no, it doesn’t really matter to me and I doubt we’ll talk about this article later; but, if you are a fan, you may have already seen that he released his new album through iTunes on March 23, 2015.

I was actually just sitting at my desk around 11:00pm on the 22nd I noticed another article that’s cover photo was something like “iTunes leaks Earl Sweatshirt album” and so I searched the title on Google, found the album through a third party streaming service, and promptly listened to it.

To start, I think I’m a huge fan of Earl Sweatshirt. I listen to Doris, his features in Mac Miller’s album Faces, and his features on the Odd Future collective weekly; seriously-I listen to Faces almost every time I have to ride the bus and I listen to “Oldie” from The OF Tape Vol. 2 almost daily. I. Like. Earl- a lot.

I Don’t Like S**t, I Don’t Go Outside: An Album by Earl Sweatshirt genuinely impressed me and I was glad to have stumbled across it. The album starts up with the song “Huey,” which is a song reminiscent of a baseball park to me because of it’s pipe organ chords underlying Earl’s lyrics. Then, the album rolls through a few songs, all with a similar eery and swampy feel, and finally wraps up with the song “Wool.” The album lasts for a relatively brief ten songs, although all but one songs are produced and written by Earl Sweatshirt and I think that he was able to condense his thoughts and emotional assessment efficiently.

It seems like within the last two weeks, all of the rap fans I’ve talked to have spoken on two things, being K-Dot’s (Kendrick Lamar’s) new album To Pimp A Butterfly and Earl Sweatshirts I Don’t…. Specifically, I talked to Grayson Cidzik about I Don’t…. and he mentioned that his favorite is “Grief,” a roughly four minute song with a slow tempo production and a bass heavy focus. Throughout the song, there are samples that remind me of the sound effects I used to hear playing Spiderman for the gameboy- like a punch or a kick- uh, or a tailwhip move from Earthworm Jim: the kind of eight-bit music one might find listening to Doctor P and Deadmau5. “Grief” reached number one for Earl Sweatshirt’s most played songs of the album on Spotify- just around five thousand short of a million plays as of Wednesday, April 8, 2015.

Honestly, I didn’t like “Grief” because I rather listen to something with a faster pace and I like just a few songs from the 16 track To Pimp A Butterfly. I see the appeal in both, I think that they are both awesome pieces of work as far as product’s and artworks go, and I just don’t want to listen to either- aside from “How Much A Dollar Cost” and “Complexion” from To Pimp. Both of those songs reached me because of their transparency and honesty.

All around, I thoroughly liked listening to I Don’t…. and I’m excited to listen to more Earl Sweatshirt atop of what I already have in the future. Also, I’d love to talk to you about your thoughts on the album; I just rarely have anyone approach me about my music reviews with their opinion. Seriously, I think it’s happened around five times from a pool of three people across almost two years now.