Earl Sweatshirt

FEET OF CLAY

It continues Sweatshirt's streak as an innovator and as one of the more compelling artists of his time.

‘Feet Of Clay’ eschews Olympian-style rhyme schemes and bursts of clear-eyed soul-searching, instead offering a tender portrayal of Earl's psyche.

The EP retains the low-fi stream-of-consciousness sensibilities established in Sweatshirt’s past work whilst trading introspection with a much more tender sense of retrospection.

Feet Of Clay comes to life on a granular level. A tiny masterpiece awaits around every corner.

As abrasive as it feels, it’s a lyrically rewarding payoff for listeners who choose to sift through the muddle and explore a high-brow exercise into poetry.

It's hard to look up after these 15 minutes have passed and feel like you've been taken on any sort of journey or along any narrative.

Earl’s dense, unassuming flow is mixed almost equally alongside labyrinthine samples and buried-alive drums like a particularly busy piece of mosaic art.

Earl is as you've come to know him: unflinchingly honest, languid yet lyrically dexterous and decidedly lo-fi.

The beats push at the extreme of what a beat can be, the raps push at the extremes of cryptic boho lyricism, and they seem to drift along on their own sleepy paths, parallel but never quite meeting.

Feet of Clay sounds like a cobbled together set of SRS-style odds and ends.