I thought you said Weast…
[Video]
[5.00]
Ian Mathers: I get the appeal of Earl himself, but what did they do to that poor accordion???
[5]
Nortey Dowuona: A 2-D accordion solo plays behind Earl as he raps acapella to his friends, who are so paralyzed with fear they do not avert their eyes from him.
[8]
Tobi Tella: How many levels of irony does something have to be behind before it circles back to lazy? The circus-esque beat and clearly off-beat rapping makes it clear that this is supposed to be playful and not serious, but plays more like a Brechtian distancing technique. When I first saw it was 1:49 I wondered how I was going to be satisfied, but now I think my brain might’ve melted if it went on any longer.
[2]
Thomas Inskeep: Earl Sweatshirt’s simultaneous popularity and avant-gardeness bring me hope that America sometimes appreciates good, weird music. That said, this is less a song than a sketch, a brief freestyle over an accordion loop that I can’t imagine actively wanting to hear again. But I applaud him for releasing stuff like this.
[5]
Alfred Soto: That violin hook does its best to irritate, eh? Like one of Tricky’s late nineties exercises in discord, “East” needs several listens to penetrate, assuming listeners will put in the effort. Say that Earl Sweatshirt records the decade’s most obtrusive ambient hip-hop and leave it at that.
[6]
Kylo Nocom: You’re about to get on the Popeye ride at Islands of Adventure when some weirdo in line strikes up a quick conversation with you. He seems rather hung up on his girlfriend, but you’re still somewhat entranced by what he’s saying. Occasionally he drops sentences that seem cohesive and often poignant, but other times he seems to be rambling about God knows what. Maybe the hypnotism is just in the warm timbre of his voice. After not even two minutes of Floridian heat and dehydration, you faint. Once you come to, you realize he’s already disappeared into the Universal Express line.
[4]
Julian Axelrod: Some Rap Songs was a revelation because Earl found a pocket only he could inhabit, stretching warped, decaying samples into rickety, duct-taped loops that barely survived past the two-minute mark. It was a moment of harmony between Earl the rapper and Earl the producer, an auteurist masterclass in playing to your own strengths. But true genius is never satisfied, and “East” is the sound of someone stumbling over their own success. The drumless accordion jaunt is an audacious evolution of the SRS sound, the kind of beat you don’t ride so much as swim against its current. Earl’s emotionally naked bars get drowned out by the dissonance, which seems fine by him; this is the internal monologue of an artist who’s most comfortable when nobody’s listening.
[5]