Album Reviews: Earl Sweatshirt- Doris and A$AP Ferg- Trap Lord

Sometimes, I listen to rap music.

Let me clarify—sometimes, I listen to new rap music. Rap music made by today’s young crop of young performers; the artists you see repped on Pitchfork, therefore you think that you should probably like them. Or at least try to like them.

This happened to me last year when Kendrick Lamar’s Good Kid, mAAd City, and Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange were named the best two albums of 2012 by pretty much everyone. So I tried. I tried really hard with both of them.

But I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t get into either of them.

Like I said, sometimes I listen to rap music. And right now, I’m trying to get onboard with these two albums—Doris, by Earl Sweatshirt, and Trap Lord, by A$AP Ferg.

Who is Earl Sweatshirt? He’s not even twenty. He spent time in a boarding school for at-risk boys in Samoa. And he’s one of the breakout stars of the controversial hip-hop collective Odd Future Wolfgang Kill Them All.

Since Odd Future rose to prominence about two years ago, I’ve really tried hard to ignore them—de facto leader Tyler, The Creator just attracts negative press—riots at in store appearances, misogynistic and homophobic lyrics, et. al. As a collective, they continue to grow in popularity, and solo albums from key members of the group are critically lauded and top the Billboard 200 album charts.

So now that brings us to Earl Sweatshirt’s debut LP, Doris.

Sweatshirt has a unique flow—it’s not “lazy,” but there’s a lack of energy, but it’s not a bad thing. He makes it work in his favor. His delivery is intense, but just very subtle—you have to be really paying attention to catch everything that is packed into the lyrics.

Stylistically, Doris is dark. Sure there are punch lines scattered throughout, but the overall tone somewhat gloomy—the somber, skittering beats of “Guild,” along with the pitch shifted vocals just make it an unsettling listen. Doris is certainly not a fun record, and it’s apparent that even though his rap name is Earl Sweatshirt, he’s meant to be taken seriously, and that he’s a complex individual.

Throughout the course of the album, the beats are overall pretty dope. There are some cringe worthy moments—particularly the RZA’s phoned in appearance on “Molasses,” where his only contribution is saying, “I’ll fuck the freckles off your face, bitch.” Yikes. He also contributes production to this song, and it’s again, another example of why he needs to stay behind the boards and not step in front of the mic.

On “Burgundy,” guest Vince Staples provides some light comic relief at the start of each verse by brining up Earl’s exile in Samoa and his eventual return—“What up, n***a? Why you so depressed and sad all the time like a little bitch? What’s the problem man? N***as want to hear you rap…I heard you back, I need them raps n***a. I need the verse. I don’t care about what you going through or what you gotta do, n***a. I need bars, sixteen of ‘em.”

Lyrically, there are times when it covers some rather weighty stuff—absentee fathers are mentioned on more than one song, and on “Sunday,” Odd Future associate Frank Ocean steps up, not crooning but rapping, calling out Chris Brown for an altercation they had in a recording studio parking lot.

There’s no denying that Earl Sweatshirt is an incredibly talented young MC. With all the hype surrounding him and this release, I feel like I am REALLLY supposed to love the shit out of it. And I don’t. It’s just kind of there. Earl’s voice and delivery are unique, but as a whole, the album didn’t end up resonating with me or staying with me the way other hip-hop albums do.

However, Doris was exponentially more palatable in comparison to Trap Lord, by A$AP Ferg.

Yes, the dollar sign really belongs in his name, because Ferg is part of the A$AP Crew, most known for their breakout star A$AP Rocky.  The A$AP, if you weren’t aware, stands for “Always Strive and Prosper.”

Trap Lord is sure an album. And it sticks true to the title—this IS trap music—a theoretical genre that emerged from southern hip-hop in the early 2000’s. Typically, you can tell if something is trap music if it involves organ rumbling bass kick drums, sharp snare hits, and varying speeds of hi-hat cymbals.

The real issue with sticking to that one specific sound is that it gets really repetitive and somewhat maddening after a certain point—that’s definitely one of the fatal flaws of Ferg’s album. Like the first two songs alone are pretty much the same song. They have different lyrics, so you can kind of tell them apart.  The first is about how Ferg cannot decide which gun to use to kill a “motherfucka”—either the Magnum, or the .44; the second is about Shabba Ranks—a Jamaican artist from the 90’s. Most of the song just revolves around saying his name a lot in time with the trapped out beat.

I will say that as flat out irritating as some of these songs can be, they are so fucking infectious. Like right now all I can think about is saying “Shabba Ranks” over and over again.

Lyrically, Ferg’s album relies on what I hope is the fictional/storytelling aspect of hip-hop. I really do hope that he didn’t REALLY make a decision about which gun to use when planning on shooting somebody.

Elsewhere, on “Murda Something,” Ferg and guest MC Waka Flocka Flame discuss how they are, in fact, NOT AFRAID TO MURDER SOMETHING.

In the wake of the gangsta rap boom of the mid 1990’s, it’s been a good 15 years for sure since anyone attempted to be REALLY gangsta. A lot of today’s rap falls into the “luxury” category, where you’re just flossin and driving around in your Maybach, fucking someone’s bitch.

But here’s A$AP Ferg, an artist with a distribution deal linked to a major label, and he’s writing rhyme after rhyme about how he is going to shoot someone. Ferg is all of, like, 24 years old. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY?

There are some pretty chuckle-worthy moments on Trap Lord—I’m specifically looking at the incredible refrain on “Dump Dump,”—

I fucked yo bitch, n***a, I fucked yo bitch

She sucked my dick, n***a, she sucked my dick

That is said a few more times, then there’s some grumblings about shooting someone.

In 1999, after the fallout from the disastrous Woodstock ’99 festival, rap-metal bands like Limp Bizkit and KoRn where labeled as “rape rock”—music that is pretty much just going to incite violence and cause a lot of bad stuff to happen wherever it goes. There are moments when Trap Lord comes off that way. Is it all an act? Is Ferg serious and he’s totally going to shoot some less desirable person once he finally decides which gun to use?

Trap Lord is the kind of record that I will listen to in the car because it’s funny to drive around in my 2002 Chevy Cavalier playing something like this. Trap Lord is not the kind of album I’d listen to in my home, nor is it something that I’ll honestly be revisiting within a month from now.

In general, I feel like my inability to connect 100% with both of these records—Doris and Trap Lord, are based on the fact that I am not the intended audience. I’m not saying white people aren’t the intended audience. I’m willing to bet that MANY white people will be buying these records.

But I think that I’m maybe too old for this shit.

Like for real. I don’t think that A$AP Ferg is keeping a 30 year old in mind when he’s writing out his lyrics. I think that I like hip-hop music from a specific time period (the mid-1990’s) because it’s aged incredibly well and it’s still impressive and fascinating to listen to. I can see Doris possibly being talked about a few years from now, but like all “flash in the pan” rappers that get repped a bunch of Pitchfork, I think that no one is going to give a shit about Trap Lord by this time next year.  

Like how a car or computer begins plummeting in value as soon as the money leaves your hands and it’s yours. It’s called “planned obsolescence.” I feel like the target demographic for today’s rising stars of rap music have no attention span at all. They’ll latch on to one thing for a few months, but then something else will come along, and they’ll lose interest completely in the first thing.

And it’s an endless cycle—young rappers putting out mixtapes, getting mentioned by various “esteemed” music websites, getting signed to major label deal, working on an album that will either be delayed multiple times or may just never come out at all, catching a small amount of fleeing success, and then fading away into popular music obscurity.