Earl - Doris
Do you remember the exciting parts of being a teenager? Driving in the car, pumping some hipster music while composing essays in your head about the relative awesome kick-ass-ness of you and your friends? That moment when activities which later seemed stereotypical or pretentious - buying strangely patterned clothing at a thrift shop, throwing a party with (how edgy) wine, finding a concert in a dingy hole in the wall - were accomplishments which brought out and affirmed, effortlessly, the coolness of both you and the world.
Rap music fills a vital role in affirming that state of harmony with the world, of being a God, of loving hip hop and your friends and by extension everyone else. Artists like A$AP Rocky, Joey Bada$$ and Kendrick Lamar serve up contagious egotism - by bestowing the gift of infectious, beat-heavy music, they share the experience of being the best. And Odd Future, despite being commonly categorized as “shock rap”, provide the same celebrations of youth packaged in the joyfully and naively offensive language of teenagers on top of the world.
Do you remember a time when spontaneous enjoyment seems impossible, classes you used to love shrink to an assembly of facts and references, high school friends revealed as insecure, foolishly rash, no one to bother nodding to in the hallway. “Doris,” Earl’s breakout record after a four year leave of absence, is the awkward transition between idealism and disillusionment, a depressed 28-year-old soul playing the role of a joyfully irresponsible 19-year-old hooligan.
Technically, “Doris” resounds with unquestionable beauty, from the lush instrumental beat on “Burgundy” to the verses on “Hoarse” and “Knight,” blooming with slant rhymes and pockets of alliteration. On “Hoarse,” Earl raps, “Gorgeous, chrome plated horse whip, home-making paintings from poor quality porn flicks,” in the titular “hoarse” voice, syllables sliding between a smooth, syncopated beat. The guest verses from other members of Odd Future - while not as verbally deft as Earl’s - radiate earnestness: each metaphor and expletive insist on the larger-than-life importance of cars and money and sex. Earl dresses up the subject matter in intricate metaphors and obscure references (and, often, obscure references within intricate metaphors), tossing unrelated images into a rap melting pot. Take verse 2 of “Hoarse”: “Pro Abortion endorsing his own importance/Or leaving opponents floating with paper and dirty porcelain/Pinnacle of titillating crisp spit/Fist clinched emulating ’68 Olympics.” Recap: Earl poetically threatens to shit on competition, matches the o sounds in opponents, floating and porcelain, meta-references the “crisp” syllables of “pinnacle” and “titillating,” and nods to the iconic black power fist-pump image from the ’68 Olympics. A display of unquestionable prowess, but the influx of elaborately detailed, only marginally related images detracts from the visceral extremity of Earl’s claims. The clutter in many of Earl’s other verses occludes any meaning at all: “Desolate testaments trying to stay Jekyll-ish/But most n****s Hyde and Brenda just stay preg-a-nant,” he raps incomprehensibly on “Hive.” Listening to most celebratory songs on “Doris” is like watching a room full of meticulous English majors construct maximumly clever references and line up similar vowel sounds.
Anthony Fantano, creator of the music criticism blog the Needle Drop, observed that “it seems like Earl doesn’t really want to be” rapping on “Doris” in the first place. At times, the opposite seems true - you feel the effort pumped into each line of “Doris,” a struggle to capture emotion by perfecting technical skill. Earl compensates for enthusiasm with flowery language, inserting popular references in the hope of evoking emotion by proxy. (After all, everything can’t be pointless bullshit, can it?) Earl may not “want to be here,” but he really wants to want to be here.
The best parts of Earl tell what the rest of the album shows: lack of inspiration, depression, the struggle to resuscitate joy by adopting the pretenses of being happy. Compared to the orchestral richness of songs like “Burgundy,” hit single “Chum” rests on the bare framework of a beat, a basic drum pattern and a looped piano melody. Instead of directly invoking an emotion, Earl tells the story of his conflicts with other people’s expectations, the frustration of trying to find your own voice while loved ones either care too much or too little. “Too black for the white kids, too white for the blacks,” Earl pivots between cultural expectations, “from honor role to cracking locks up off them bicycle racks.” Just as “Doris” mimics the boasts of other Odd Future members, Earl’s portrayed with his friends in “Chum” claiming to “hate his father in dishonest jest/when really I missed this n****[my father] like I was six/and every time I got the chance to say it I would swallow it.” The hook of “Sunday” brilliantly summarizes Earl’s determined search for emotion: “All my dreams got dimmer when I stopped smoking pot...Loving you’s a little different, I don’t like you a lot.” I’d like to think Earl loves Wolf Gang, loves to rap, loves to be famous - why else write an album in the first place? Why even attempt to recreate youthful joy you no longer feel? But the immediate expression of that love - the enjoyment of driving in the car with your friends, of wanting to spit a sick verse to immortalize the joy of that moment - the like - is gone.
Rap music fills a vital role in affirming that state of harmony with the world, of being a God, of loving hip hop and your friends and by extension everyone else. Artists like A$AP Rocky, Joey Bada$$ and Kendrick Lamar serve up contagious egotism - by bestowing the gift of infectious, beat-heavy music, they share the experience of being the best. And Odd Future, despite being commonly categorized as “shock rap”, provide the same celebrations of youth packaged in the joyfully and naively offensive language of teenagers on top of the world.
Do you remember a time when spontaneous enjoyment seems impossible, classes you used to love shrink to an assembly of facts and references, high school friends revealed as insecure, foolishly rash, no one to bother nodding to in the hallway. “Doris,” Earl’s breakout record after a four year leave of absence, is the awkward transition between idealism and disillusionment, a depressed 28-year-old soul playing the role of a joyfully irresponsible 19-year-old hooligan.
Technically, “Doris” resounds with unquestionable beauty, from the lush instrumental beat on “Burgundy” to the verses on “Hoarse” and “Knight,” blooming with slant rhymes and pockets of alliteration. On “Hoarse,” Earl raps, “Gorgeous, chrome plated horse whip, home-making paintings from poor quality porn flicks,” in the titular “hoarse” voice, syllables sliding between a smooth, syncopated beat. The guest verses from other members of Odd Future - while not as verbally deft as Earl’s - radiate earnestness: each metaphor and expletive insist on the larger-than-life importance of cars and money and sex. Earl dresses up the subject matter in intricate metaphors and obscure references (and, often, obscure references within intricate metaphors), tossing unrelated images into a rap melting pot. Take verse 2 of “Hoarse”: “Pro Abortion endorsing his own importance/Or leaving opponents floating with paper and dirty porcelain/Pinnacle of titillating crisp spit/Fist clinched emulating ’68 Olympics.” Recap: Earl poetically threatens to shit on competition, matches the o sounds in opponents, floating and porcelain, meta-references the “crisp” syllables of “pinnacle” and “titillating,” and nods to the iconic black power fist-pump image from the ’68 Olympics. A display of unquestionable prowess, but the influx of elaborately detailed, only marginally related images detracts from the visceral extremity of Earl’s claims. The clutter in many of Earl’s other verses occludes any meaning at all: “Desolate testaments trying to stay Jekyll-ish/But most n****s Hyde and Brenda just stay preg-a-nant,” he raps incomprehensibly on “Hive.” Listening to most celebratory songs on “Doris” is like watching a room full of meticulous English majors construct maximumly clever references and line up similar vowel sounds.
Anthony Fantano, creator of the music criticism blog the Needle Drop, observed that “it seems like Earl doesn’t really want to be” rapping on “Doris” in the first place. At times, the opposite seems true - you feel the effort pumped into each line of “Doris,” a struggle to capture emotion by perfecting technical skill. Earl compensates for enthusiasm with flowery language, inserting popular references in the hope of evoking emotion by proxy. (After all, everything can’t be pointless bullshit, can it?) Earl may not “want to be here,” but he really wants to want to be here.
The best parts of Earl tell what the rest of the album shows: lack of inspiration, depression, the struggle to resuscitate joy by adopting the pretenses of being happy. Compared to the orchestral richness of songs like “Burgundy,” hit single “Chum” rests on the bare framework of a beat, a basic drum pattern and a looped piano melody. Instead of directly invoking an emotion, Earl tells the story of his conflicts with other people’s expectations, the frustration of trying to find your own voice while loved ones either care too much or too little. “Too black for the white kids, too white for the blacks,” Earl pivots between cultural expectations, “from honor role to cracking locks up off them bicycle racks.” Just as “Doris” mimics the boasts of other Odd Future members, Earl’s portrayed with his friends in “Chum” claiming to “hate his father in dishonest jest/when really I missed this n****[my father] like I was six/and every time I got the chance to say it I would swallow it.” The hook of “Sunday” brilliantly summarizes Earl’s determined search for emotion: “All my dreams got dimmer when I stopped smoking pot...Loving you’s a little different, I don’t like you a lot.” I’d like to think Earl loves Wolf Gang, loves to rap, loves to be famous - why else write an album in the first place? Why even attempt to recreate youthful joy you no longer feel? But the immediate expression of that love - the enjoyment of driving in the car with your friends, of wanting to spit a sick verse to immortalize the joy of that moment - the like - is gone.