Not one to conform to expectations, Harry Fraud’s latest Scion-endorsed heater, “Yacht Lash” is loud, rough, overtly psychedelic and as far from high fanutin’ beats he’s generally produced in the past. It features kindred spirits Earl Sweatshirt and Riff Raff and will appear on Fraud’s upcoming High Time EP (coming next week). For those that don’t understand the gawd Riff Raff, this probably isn’t for you, but it should be. Earl fans will be in for a nice surprise as “Yacht Lash” is one of the toughest tracks we’ve received from Mr. Sweatshirt in quite some time. Stream below and download here.
On only his second solo track since returning from Samoa, Earl Sweatshirt takes us back to his formative years over a simple piano loop. Sincere as ever, Earl spits about awkward growing pains, meeting Tyler, going “from honor roll to cracking locks up off those bicycle racks” and his crew “feeling as hard as Vince Carter’s knee cartilage is”. Honestly, I could listen to Earl spit over pretty piano loops like this for hours and not get bored. The backing vocals sure do sound a lot like “Captain Murphy” (or Lord Quas I suppose) and there’s little doubt that Earl has some role in the character. Stream below.
Back in April, a menagerie of characters joined Flying Lotus on stage for the finale of his Weekend One Coachella set, punctuated by a live rendition of “Hard In Paint”. The on-stage crowd was made up largely of the Brainfeeder cohort, but one prepubescent face stuck out. None other than Earl Sweatshirt was standing front and center flapping his stick like arms and wylin’ like… well like he was on stage for a Thundercat assisted rendition of “Hard In The Paint”. Up until that point, a collaboration between the two Angelenos seemed like nothing more than a pipe dream and their public relationship boiled down to Twitter banter. From there though… whew anything was possible. “Between Friends” is that possibility. Part of Adult Swim’s Singles Series (faultless as of late), the collaboration is another example of the Odd Future stalwart taking his talents in a new direction. Last week, he was featured on The Alchemist’s dusty “Elimination Chamber” and “Between Friends” sees him attempting another distinctly non-Odd Future sound. Both fans and haters of the collective will be hard-pressed not to sink their teeth into “Between Friends”, also featuring the mysteriously named Captain Murphy that sounds a little like Tyler. The fractured beginning of the track is congruent with the off-kilter sound FlyLo has carefully cultivated, a sound as akin to Dilla as it is to Aphex Twin, that is to say somewhere in the realm between sample hip hop and jungle. Earl’s sometime frustrating monotone effortlessly slips into the grooves of the beat and that’s about all you need to know. Lucky for all of us, the good folks at Adult Swim are giving away “Between Friends” for free (get it below). The track will not appear on FlyLo’s upcoming Until The Quiet Comes, hitting us on October 1st.
OF Tapes Vol. 2 isn’t set to be released until Tuesday, but this morning we bring you two cuts off the album. One is a track by Frank Ocean, who features on several other songs on the album, but limits his solo presence to this song. The track (called “White“) is extremely minimal and rather brief, but Ocean’s crooning carries it through enjoyably. Listen over at Prefix.
The second leaked track, on the other hand, is over ten minutes long, so brevity is not an issue. It is notably less official, as well, having been pulled from unknown Tumblr blogs around the web. But this song, “Oldie,” features an excellent appearance from recently-returned Odd Future member Earl Sweatshirt, whose lengthy verse is certainly a welcome addition to the track. Stream the track (via one of the aforementioned random Tumblrs) right here.
Ladies and gentlemen, it seems long-absent OFWGKTA member Earl Sweatshirt has returned. The youngest (but possibly the most promising) member of Odd Future, who has been away from the music scene for quite some time, is reportedly free from his stint at reform school/rehab at Coral Reef Academy in Samoa.
Yesterday afternoon, new Twitter and Tumblr pages surfaced, seemingly linked to Earl. His first tweet upon return? “Home.” Then, a YouTube video popped up, featuring Earl’s face backed by a snippet of a new song. “You want the whole shit, give me 50,000 twitter followers,” the description demanded.
Just a few hours later, his Twitter account had reached 50k followers, and he Tweeted the link to a new website, which was barren except for a music player containing a new song, “Home.” The track, which does indeed seem to be new material from Earl, is backed by a noisy, cymbal-heavy beat and contains the dark, nonchalant flow we’ve been missing from the young rapper. The last line states, “and I’m…..back. Bye.” Download the full song here.
However, before you throw out your Free Earl hoodie, it’s only fair to let you know that Tyler, The Creator‘s tweets from yesterday expressed far more frustration and anger than the celebration we might have expected from him. One tweet, which has since been deleted, read, “Ive Never Been Excited And Angry At The Same Time Until Today. Thats A Fucked Feeling.” So for now, only time will tell whether Earl is back in LA for good. We’ll keep you posted.
The Astral Plane 