As a teenager, Los Angeles rapper Earl Sweatshirt (born Thebe Neruda Kgositsile) made his name with the hip-hop collective Odd Future, before his mother sent him to a Samoan boarding school. At 19, Sweatshirt returned with “Doris,” his critically acclaimed debut, and more recently followed it up with the concise, DIY masterpiece, “I Don’t Like Sh*t, I Don’t Go Outside.”
Songs like “Faucet” resonate with strained familial and personal relationships: “I don’t know who house to call home lately,” he raps, over music dripping with melancholy, loneliness and pent-up rage. “I hope my phone break, let it ring / Toe to toe with the foes, new and old / Basic hoes try to cage him like the po’ / When I run, don’t chase me.”
On tour, Sweatshirt plays the new album from start to finish. He’ll arrive at Toad’s Place in New Haven on Sunday, Sept. 6.
CTNow: Your album “I Don’t Like Sh*t, I Don’t Go Outside” came out in March. The song “Faucet” sticks with me. I’m not even sure why.
Earl Sweatshirt: I’ll tell you why, bro. Because I didn’t write it. It was really natural. I was in a studio, and I think my mom texted me, and I hadn’t seen her in some months, like a long, long-ass time. That might not be uncommon, but I’ve been far from my mom. I’d been low-key ducking her. I’d skipped Mother’s Day and some other sh*t, and she hit me with some text. I was working on the beat before she hit me with the text, and it just got contextualized after that. I took the first verse line-for-line and then did the hook, and then I went home at like 8 in the morning, and then came back the next day and finished.
CTNow: So you’d already produced the backing track?
ES: No, just literally in the session that I recorded it at. And it was like another beat, too. The “Faucet” beat came out … I just sort of sampled myself, the beat that was playing, just a short part of it. I was moving the loop around.
CTNow: It seems to exist in a different space than the other songs on the album.
ES: It’s my favorite. That song is when I get into the show.
CTNow: Where do you place it in the live show?
ES: In order of the album. I do some songs off “Doris,” and then I start doing “I Don’t Like Sh*t,” and I just go from one through nine.
CTNow: Did you put the songs on the album that way, or how did that order present itself to you?
ES: It’s just the right way. It was just the way the album flows. You’re never left naked, you know what I’m saying?
CTNow: Some artists record an album and put it out there, and very quickly they’re on to the next thing. But it sounds like the album is still very fresh for you.
ES: It’ll feel good for a long time, just because of what it represents for me, but that’s not to say that I’m not onto the next thing. I’m always pressed about music. I always gotta have it. I just have to find a way to get the music off my computer. I’ll just be listening to music all day, and then whenever something catches me … However it’s natural.
CTNow: Tell me about the tour. Do the audiences get it?
ES: Yeah, man. It’s something, bro. It’s very strong. That’s what I mean that “Faucet” is my favorite. That one is ripping, and I didn’t even mean it to be. Just when you let that sh*t channel through you, bro, people don’t know — you don’t know exactly what it is, but it’s magnetic. It’s all data man, it’s the whole experience. It all happens at one moment.
CTNow: I read that you created most of the beats on the record. How do you learn how to do that? Are you self-taught, or did people help you at first?
ES: Yeah, I just watched people who are good and just absorbed that and made it my own. If you love doing it, you’re going to make it good, no questions asked. You’re not going to get discouraged. You’re going to learn what you like and do it.
CTNow: When you first started making beats, how much time passed before you hit upon something that you really liked and were proud of?
ES: Actually, not that long. Probably a couple of years, to be real. There was sh*t that I made that was hard, but I was like, “I can do way better than this.” I get over old sh*t really quickly sometimes, if I listen to it too much. I’ll get over sh*t that I’ve made if I listen to it too much. It always keeps me making some new sh*t.
CTNow: Your lyrics have been poured over by countless people, on websites like Rap Genius and so on. Are you OK with people doing that?
ES: I’m cool with people doing it for themselves, but I hate that there’s a place to go for that like Rap Genius. It’s, like, one person’s idiotic rendition of your song that the world pays attention to. And people in other countries who don’t speak English, they go to that website and draw retarded-ass meanings for your music, just based off one dude’s errors.
CTNow: Have you ever been tempted to correct any of those errors? Or do you pretty much just ignore it?
ES: I don’t have the time or the energy to combat Rap Genius. I just have to hope there’s some portion of the consumer base, whatever’s left of it, to draw their own meaning.
EARL SWEATSHIRT performs at Toad’s Place in New Haven on Sunday, Sept. 6, at 9 p.m., with Remy Banks opening. Tickets are $22.50. Information: toadsplace.com.
