Back in 2013, rapper Earl Sweatshirt was best known as a prodigiously young and mysterious member of Tyler the Creator’s west coast rap collective Odd Future. Joining the group when he was 15 and spitting dextrous yet shockingly violent verses on their early mixtapes, Sweatshirt (real name Thebe Neruda Kgositsile) swiftly disappeared almost as soon as the collective came to prominence.
His time out of the spotlight was a result of his law professor mother sending him to Samoa to attend a school for at-risk teens. Upon his return in 2013, now 19, he produced a stunning and deeply mature debut album, Doris. Gone were the sexual assault fantasies and instead Kgositsile employed his signature drawl on sludgy tracks that exposed his relationship with his absent father, his friendships and the frantic state of LA.
