Earl Sweatshirt Imposes Himself With Some Clever Rhymes and Strategic Beats [REVIEW]

This month marks 25 years since N.W.A. kicked its way straight outta Compton. Eminem has become a new Bob Dylan, the subject of academic studies on culture, not a provocateur. Rappers could once rattle mothers and politicians up front, and sell record to those stiffs' kids out the back, both making money and maintaining their boogeyman image at the same time. Now the raunch of Juicy J's "Bandz a Make Her Dance" and Lil Wayne's political posturing during "God Bless Amerika" barely raises an eyebrow. What's an urban aggressor to do?

Thebe "Earl Sweatshirt" Kgositsile grew up the child of a USC professor and a poet. Even if his biography doesn't take away from his opening bars on "Doris," rapping about "artillery" and "killing 'em all in a minute," his stoned, verbal sucks the aggression out of his words. Earl, sans instrumentals, frightens no one. Thanks to producer and alter-ego randomblackdude, Earl strikes from the opposite perspective. The beats become the disturbance, casting themselves like a spotlight onto the rapper, taking his mundane visage and casting an intimidating shadow, a horror lurking.

"Doris" plays like a masterclass on scoring horror films. The best composers have demonstrated that creating unease works best when offering less. "Centurion" finds Earl and Vince Staples trading bloodlust while violins mimic spiders, the pitch climbing up and down the strings, packing suspense as Bernard Herrman did to Hitchcock's best work. "Centurion" creates Earl the murderer, but "Hive" invents Earl the monster. The bass in typical club raps thumps like a hammer, but it simply looms during "Hive," dipping in and out of the water like Jaws. It refuses to be in the listener's face, but they know it's there, which makes it all the more eerie.

The majority of "Doris" takes the Kubrickian approach. "The Shining" created most of its terror aurally -- instruments rising when they shouldn't, going bump when nothing was the matter. "Guild" and "20 Wave Caps" stumbles over rhythms that stutter and cut out, failing to establish recognizable beats and rejecting attempts to groove with it. Any frustration from the failure to dance is soon replaced by unease, paranoia over expectations denied. Earl and his producers borrow heavily from Krautrock icons Neu!, disrupting natural rhythm and flow alike by phasing, slowing the pace in small steps for trippy effect. Of course, the phasing could be aiming for a vibe that jives with the "molly" mindset Earl frequently references.

The lyrics Earl and company spit bounce between ludicrous and clever (as well as between ludicrous and hard-hitting). He proved himself as an emcee during his Odd Future days, so gem bars such as "Nightmares got more vivid when I stopped smoking pot/And lovin' you's a little different, I don't like you a lot" (presumably aimed at God during "Sunday"), and referring to the posterior as a "gluteus maximus" shouldn't surprise. Blending those rhymes with strategic production and toying with listener's emotions...that makes "Doris" more than the sum of Earl's mixtapes.