The prodigy returns or something…
[Video][Website]
[7.00]
Brad Shoup: Earl’s skill, like Ghostface’s and DOOM’s, isn’t in wordplay per se, it’s in elision: paring the linking words, trusting the images to land like lasers in exhaust ports. It’s like an Aesop Rock track you can actually listen to with people. Non sequiturs, buried allusions, describing the tricks while he’s performing… he’s trying so hard to dazzle without breaking a sweat, and I’m dazzled. It’s OK, Tyler: RZA isn’t that great on the mic either.
[9]
Anthony Easton: A masterclass in referents (the referent and the referer working in concert), metaphors, floating and ambiguous language. Anxious, unsettled, and incredibly clever.
[9]
Alfred Soto: His bit in Frank Ocean’s “Super Rich Kids” was Earl’s best to date, and he tops himself, snapping vowels while Tyler growls support.
[7]
Patrick St. Michel: Nothing here is a revelation as much as a reminder. After spending a long time trying to capture past glory, Tyler, the Creator stumbles into the role he was always meant to play in Odd Future — hypeman rather than main star. His solo songs often try to hard to titillate and end up tedious, but when he’s helping his friends out as the walking hook on “Whoa” he’s in his element (and on video, dude makes great faces). He’s smart enough to let Earl Sweatshirt — always the most technically gifted of the lot — take the spotlight as he effortlessly flings out lines about legit manga and Quidditch. It’s the sort of rapping you want to hear over and over again to catch all the details.
[8]
Crystal Leww: Earl is chugging along rapping about the things that teenage boy rap nerds think is cool: engaging with rap tropes with an Odd Future sneer and referencing rap history and other rap artists. His articulation is really clear, and the way he delivers his words is pleasant but one-noted. The beat is okay, but I could do without that high pitched squeal and the mostly bored/stoned sounding whoaaaaas. Tyler is… here. He mostly shows up to announce the return of the aforementioned Odd Future sneer and spell out GOLFWANG too many times. Once is enough; the amount of times he does it here is inexcusable.
[4]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Tyler and Earl sound just like Dame Dash and Cam’ron on “I Am Dame Dash”: the former in loud-mouthed fuck-you-pay-me mogul mode, the latter sleepily arrogant and dizzyingly word-hungry. Just like “I Am Dame Dash”, “Whoa” is about reminding the listener of the birth of a dynasty (“that old fuckin’ 2010 shit”, the queasy floor-swallowing production) whilst parading the wealth the dynasty keeps bringing in (hilariously, “a quarter million offa socks”). And just like “I Am Dame Dash”, it’s a welcome reminder that super talented, super rich kids get caught up in mythologising and let the damn song fly over your head, leaving small traces of technically-pleasing syntax and brio behind. For Cam, “Downtown/Novi took him/we called Dukie” were words he could crunch away at; Earl turns “hunt for clues/more food” into a spluttering, mysterious passage.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: Earl’s stoned-logophile rhapsodizing is addictive, if reminiscent of earlier psuedo-profound stringers-together of abstract imagery for the sake of an overstuffed rhyme scheme. Tyler, meanwhile, is getting too old for his fake-ass provocation to sound as if even he cares about it.
[6]
Jonathan Bradley: Earl’s syllables have become even denser and more arcane since his synonymous 2010 debut, which wouldn’t in itself distinguish him from other underground wordsmiths dedicated to layering signifier upon signifier to the point of incomprehensibility. Sweatshirt distinguishes himself with his astonishing mellifluousness — he weaves bulky syllables with even bulkier entendres into a butter-smooth stream of late-adolescent tetchiness. “Pissed as Rick Ross’s fifth sip off his sixth lager,” he raps, as though the tongue-twisting were effortless. “Known to sit and wash the sins off at the pitch alter/Hat never backwards like the print off legit manga.” It’s this talent that caused some of of us to dive deep into the most pungent couplets from his early career, and, truth be told, Earl hasn’t yet figured out how to make lyrics as striking as the likes of “hurry, I got nuts to bust and butts to fuck and ups to shut and sluts to fuckin’ uppercut/It’s OF buttercup; go ahead, fuck with us” now that he’s grown too old for such noxiousness. Still there’s plenty here to enjoy, and “Whoa” also benefits from Tyler’s pop instincts, even if the spelled-out chorus is irritating as well as catchy in this case.
[7]