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The infamous Earl Sweatshirt is back with a new album. Although he's dropped a lot of off-beat spoken word teaser tracks, all of this album is surprisingly on beat. Where this album shines is it is the inverse of most rap artist's music. The aesthetic is very urban, gritty, and authentically hip hop in the vibe, but the lyrics and presentation is very much... structurally... American? Nationalism literate? He knows a lot about what's going on, but he doesn't try to assimilate. This album succeeds in both contexts. The weakness is Earl is too artistic to even try to make jingles or melodies so casual listeners will probably not enjoy this much; but that's not who listens to his music anyway.

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