LOTS OF COMMAS: MY NAME IS EARL

Reviewing Los Angeles rapper Earl Sweatshirt's new album, Voir Dire. Plus, thoughts on Pusha T and Zach Bryan.

It was pleasantly surprising when rapper Earl Sweatshirt brought out the rest of Odd Future at his show celebrating the tenth anniversary of his debut studio album, Doris. He was originally the irreverent Los Angeles based group most dynamic and prodigious rapper — at the young age of sixteen — but this is an entirely different time in his life. Sweatshirt, born Thebe Kgositsile, is now a father, and a man who largely lives in the shadows and out of the evanescent sun. The monotone son of a poet and law professor was once sent away to a therapeutic retreat school for boys called Coral Reef Academy, a semi punishment by his mom for getting into trouble. He was regularly smoking marijuana, and hadn’t stopped the lean habit that began to form at the time of his pending stardom.