Earl Sweatshirt talks about SXSW experience in exclusive Okayplayer interview
Earl Sweatshirt at SXSW 2013.
Earl Sweatshirt--or EarlxSweat if you're nasty--is one of the oddest futurists and also one of the tuffest lyricists in the rap game in 2014. Having gone from OFWGKTA soldier to mystery man to great rap hope in the space of about a year, Earl arrives in Texas today to kick off Red Bull Sound Select's '4 Days in Austin' series--his second SXSW experience--as something of a changed man. Being fans ourselves, Okayplayer jumped on the opportunity to get on the phone with Earl from Copenhagen yesterday and chop it up at length about body odor, going into the studio adjacent to Tyler, The Creator to record his follow up to Doris next month, the cultish nature Odd Future's fanbase and most of all...how much shit is different now. Always genuine and ever expressive, Earl also might just be the easiest cat in the rap game to interview in 2014. Read the engaging and often hilarious results below and hit the links for more info on Earl's Southby appearance:
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OKP: What's up, are you in Texas already?
EARL: No, no--I’m in Copenhagen
OKP: Oh, shit.
EARL: Yeah, that’s not good.
OKP: It's not good? I've actually heard good things about Copenhagen...
EARL: Nah, Copenhagen’s good but I have a show here tonight and then I'm playin' Southby tomorrow and that’s not good.
OKP: What's the experience in Copenhagen been like?
EARL: Fuckin' strange. I woke up at 2pm today, ate KFC which I guess more or less was breakfast. Then I did an interview with this fool who, honestly? Had like the worst B.O. I’ve ever smelled, arguably.
OKP: Sorry about that.
EARL: It was fucked up, dog. It was bad to the point that I was upset. Like my stomach was upset, I was angry. And my dumb ass--instead of telling him, No we’re not gonna go to this small room with no ventilation--let it happen.
OKP: Did you do a couple shows out there?
EARL: We're on a Europe tour right now, Southby comes in the middle of it so I come back for that and then come back out here. I ain't mad, man. I get to fuckin' rap for money, at the end of the day.
OKP: Good point. Last Southby was your first SXSW experience wasn’t it—2013?
EARL: Yeah, I actually was just talking about my first Southby experience with my manager and my homie.
OKP: What was it like?
EARL: Fuckin terrible, dog. Just 'cause I wasn’t expecting what happened. I'm sure Southby's gonna be dumb fun this time but like, I was fresh off of being in fuckin' Samoa so coming back was already crazy enough in and of itself, doing the shit that I was doing was already crazy by itself, so Southby was just the most fucked shit ever. 'Cause I was not used to that shit at all. I wasn’t used to like, cameras in your face or any of that shit. It was the first time that I did some shit like this: I went out to smoke a cigarette and like 12 kids came up at once. But in the weird cult zombie kinda way that ours [OFWGKTA fans] do? And it scared the fuck out of me. Now I'm all good, though.
OKP: How did you feel about your performances last year?
EARL: They were all shitty. I was all awkward and shit. I wish I could re-do 'em.
OKP: What's your relationship like with the wolf cubs, those diehard OF fans or Earl fans—is it weird? It sounds like it could be weird…
EARL: It's one of love and one of hate as well. Because I love them deeply from within my soul 'cause I wouldn’t be able to do this without them but motherfuckers that like us don’t seem to able to like us and understand boundaries simultaneously. At the end of the day I'm as regular-n***a as the next man. Like, these girls last night...they were some young ass little girls they were 12, 13 whatever…we went out there to talk to them because they had been waiting out there for like 13 hours. And we walk up and talk to them on some normal human being shit and one of 'em just pulled the phone out with the full flash—not just the photo flash but the video one that’s everlasting? So me and Travis pulled out our phones, put on the fucking everlasting flash and put it in her face so she knew what it felt like…and then she stopped.
OKP: So you had a flash fight.
EARL: Right.
OKP: That sounds pretty safe as altercations with crazy fans go. But the way you said that made me realize a lot of what OF has been about 'til now is pushing boundaries—do you ever feel like you come in for some energy that is more in response to boundaries that Tyler or other people in the collective stepped across?
EARL: Yeah but you know what? I don’t regret the way that anything has happened. Because we got fans who are gonna fuckin' tell their kids about us you know what I mean? So if muhfuckers are a little weird or whatever that’s whatever because our fans really, really, really love us.
OKP: So coming back from Samoa and all the other craziness, to a situation where you already had a lot of fans built in, did Tyler and the other members of the crew kinda show you the ropes as far as how to handle that?
EARL: They absolutely did and I always had a template to like, build off of, from Frank [Ocean] and Tyler doing shit and being around me. But the thing with Tyler is, he’ll set a really good example or provide you with the information that’s needed or whatever it may be? But he never really held my hand with no shit, though. He definitely always had my back though and Frank's always had my back. Where I'm at now, people understand I'm an entity that’s separate from the group identity that is OF…like I didn’t know how to articulate that when I got back so initially it got misconstrued as like. What is this n**ga doin, is he trying to pull away? --by even my homies. So a lot of this shit I had to figure out on my own.
OKP: So a year or so on from all that craziness, you’ve had your own album out, you're a little more established in a regular industry sense not just being this dude who disappeared and came back...
EARL: Like a mystery thing or like a novelty.
OKP: Right. How do you feel about Earl Sweatshirt in 2014?
EARL: Confident. I'm fucking excited for the next shit. Cause of the headspace I'm in now, and moving on to the next stage. There was like the early OF stage and that for me transitioned into while I was in Samoa…and then OF Vol. 2, Wolf and Doris was kind of this transitional period of me being home. And I think that chapter has come to a close and were starting the next one…and I'm fucking excited. I'm moving in a different headspace then I've ever been in my entire life.
OKP: Are you strictly on a touring grind, are you writing and recording as you travel?
EARL: Yeah I'm writing. I record when I can but I'm about to start recording heavy in April. Right now I'm on tour for the rest of the month.
OKP: So this Red Bull Sound Select is your only Southby appearance right?
EARL: Yeah, then I'm right back to fucking Europe.
OKP: Also around this time last year, you had a bunch of major interviews; Peter Rosenberg, Elliot Wilson. You kinda came back into the full glare of the media, at least in rap industry terms...
EARL: Yeah and I didn’t know what the fuck was good at all.
OKP: Do any those stand out as a favorite interview?
EARL: Hell, naw. Those all make me want to cringe and fuckin' throw up cause I sound so fucking stupid.
OKP: I don’t know, you always came across as honestly expressing where you were really at, even if where you were at was: 'What the fuck is going on?'
EARL: Yeah, you right. Cause, ultimately if I had tried to tell n**gas like, " Yeah you know, this me, I got this shit all together. It's your boy, I’m back, (lapses into Antoine Dodson voice) we takin' heads! Lets do this!” --like it wouldn’ta been where I was actually coming from. I don’t know, I haven’t watched 'em. They all make me cringe.
OKP: So if you're still in writing mode, do you have a sense which direction you're gonna go with the next project?
EARL: One thing is that I don’t lie when I rap anymore...
OKP: Anymore? Like anymore starting...today?
EARL: No, no. You’ve never heard zero lies from me but what I mean is not even lying necessarily but you'll never hear me just having fun with the fact that a word is 3 syllables and shit. If that happens while I'm saying some shit, that’s different but its not just that.
OKP: When you say going back in the studio in April, are you going back in with Tyler or a specific producer?
EARL: Me and Tyler are gonna record our albums in April in like the same place, but in different studios. I been doin' a lot of production shit for myself though, so it makes the sound like…I don't know, when someone produces the shit that they're on, at least people like Tyler or Pharrell or whatever, there’s no truer expression of the person than when the sound is 100% them, nah mean? Like from the origin to the vocals.
OKP: But then again, one of my favorite beats on Doris is a RZA beat—are you gonna still take outside beats?
EARL: Yeah, its not like I'm making a conscious decision, it's like that (self-production) is the anchor sound and then whatever else fits into the movie well, will also go in it.
OKP: So when you're in that writing mode, are you listening to other stuff that's out here? Or are you trying to screen it all out?
EARL: Far as fuckin' new shit goes, Schoolboy's shit. I been listening to a lot of the shit that I used to listen to: Juelz and Common for the most part. I'm mostly not checking for what other n**gas are doing cause I just feel like my shit is the tightest and I think its supposed to be that way with everybody.
OKP: It's also not like it used to be, when there was kind of one king of rap at a given moment and everybody else was going for their spot...
EARL: Yeah and I'm not competing for anyone's spot because we have a world, You know? Regardless of whether I put out a great album next time, there's a guaranteed demographic of peoples that’s gonna buy it that’s just in the OF world, you know what I mean? We have a home base. But where I'll be 5 years from now all depends on whether I'm willing to break out of that bubble.
OKP: Do you have to bust out of that bubble? Or are those kids gonna grow older with Odd Future and be like 60-year olds are now with the Rolling Stones?
EARL: Well, I think there's a way to do both. Theres a way to have kids that like me now 'cause there in the OF bubble grow with me...and simultaneously make music that draws people into it. 'Cause I feel like with all the great artists that I like, that’s what happens. Their sound doesn’t get brought to the world, the world comes to their sound. Like Eminem brought people to "My Name Is," Kanye brought people to College Dropout. So it's like translating yourself into a language that is universally understood.
