The Rundown: Earl Sweatshirt, Doris

The long-awaited debut from the Odd Future rapper.

Earl Sweashirt, Doris - Earl Sweatshirt emerged from education exile in Samoa to finally put out his debut LP, Doris, a continuum of mid '90s backpack rap. While Earl pushed the labyrinthine flows of Odd Future cohorts with cuts like "Whoa" (featuring Tyler, the Creator) and "Centurion" (featuring Vince Staples), he hit a personal note with the cut "Chum."(Photo: Sony Music)

1 / 16

The Rundown: Earl Sweatshirt, Doris - A year after returning from being exiled to a school in Samoa, Odd Future's Earl Sweatshirt finally puts forth his debut LP. For young O.F. fans, this journey would be the usual hazy trip into heavy (and surreal) rap verbiage. But for vintage hip hop music heads, Doris is a serious continuum of mid '90s über undergroup rap ala the entire Rawkus Records roster. Check out this song-by-song break down of the long-awaited album. (Photo: Courtesy of Sony Music)

/content/dam/betcom/images/2013/07/Music-07-16-07-31/072413-music-earl-sweatshirt-performs.jpg

2 / 16

"PRE" featuring SK La' Flare - Earl opens up his debut trading hazy, urban real-surreal verses with SK over a crawling synth-n-bass track. "I'm a need the wolf and skin the sheep," rhymes Earl. "I'mma take the bull, skin it to the meat."(Photo: CV_imageSPACE/Splash News)

Earl Sweatshirt, @earlxsweat - Tweet: "now that I am home I can get healthy and get this album out to y'all while it's still fresh." Odd Future rap rookie Earl Sweatshirt announces that he's canceling the remainder of his live performances due to physical and mental exhaustion. But the good news is he plans to use his time off tour to not only get better, but finish up his second LP.(Photo: Roger Kisby/Getty Images)

3 / 16

"Burgundy" featuring Vince Staples - "In the middle of a tornado," Earl rocks on this lyric-fest with Mr. Staples. "In this Fitted I'm Clark Gable. I'm not stable." Horn blasts accuentuate this slow-but-steady celebration of wordplay. (Photo: Roger Kisby/Getty Images)

"20 Wave Caps" featuring Domo Gensis - This creepy paced track, with it's warped carnival organ notes, is reminiscent of mid-'90s "back-pack" rap groups like the Juggaknots and Company Flow. Especially with Earl and Domo chopping syllables to no end and dealing non-sequiturs from the bottom of the deck. (Photos: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter; Taylor Hill/WireImage/Getty Images)

4 / 16

"20 Wave Caps" featuring Domo Gensis - This creepy paced track, with it's warped carnival organ notes, is reminiscent of mid-'90s "back-pack" rap groups like the Juggaknots and Company Flow. Especially with Earl and Domo chopping syllables to no end and dealing non-sequiturs from the bottom of the deck. (Photos: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter; Taylor Hill/WireImage/Getty Images)

"Sunday" featuring Frank Ocean - In his trippy, urbane style, Earl expresses love and a pleathora of other emotions that come on "Sundays." "I could be misbehaving, but I just hang with my n----s," he confesses. "I'm f-----g famous, if you forgot. I'm faithful despite what's in my face (and in my pockets)." Even Frank Ocean jumps on and gives a verse that dares tread the controversey of his sexuality and beef with Chris Brown. (Photos: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter; Mats Andersson/WENN.com)

5 / 16

"Sunday" featuring Frank Ocean - In his trippy, urbane style, Earl expresses love and a pleathora of other emotions that come on "Sundays." "I could be misbehaving, but I just hang with my n----s," he confesses. "I'm f-----g famous, if you forgot. I'm faithful despite what's in my face (and in my pockets)." Even Frank Ocean jumps on and gives a verse that dares tread the controversey of his sexuality and beef with Chris Brown. (Photos: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter; Mats Andersson/WENN.com)

ADVERTISEMENT
Earl Sweatshirt - Earl Sweatshirt, a member of the hip hop collective Odd Future, dropped his sophomore album Doris in 2013 to critical acclaim. On “Chum,” Sweatshirt exposes his personal struggles with using alcohol to mask the pain the absence of his father caused him, being raised by a single mother and being an interracial child in America.  (Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)

6 / 16

"Hive" featuring Vince Staples and Casey Veggie - The track for this cut reminds one of the theme to Menace II Society, with Earl and cohorts volleying verbs and nouns like professional ping pong players. "All that tough talk, bruh, we know you n----s ain't about s--t," kicks Vince Staples, "Come around we gun 'em down, bodies piled [like] Auschwitz." (Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)

/content/dam/betcom/images/2012/05/Music-05-01-05-15/050312-music-earl-sweatshirt-sony.jpg

7 / 16

"Chum" - A boozy piano and snare mixture fuel this cut, which finds Earl exploring feelings about his father, who left the family when he was young. "I would just say I hate him and just resign in jest," he confessed. "When actually I miss this n---a since I was six, and every time I got a chance to say it, I would swallow it." In the wake of recent exploration of fatherless males, this joint is powerful.  (Photo: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter)

Photo By Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter

Tyler, The Creator, @f--ktyler - Tweet: "OF IS BANNED FROM NEW ZEALAND, AGAIN. THEY SAID WE WERE 'TERRORIST THREATS AND BAD FOR THE SOCIETY' OR WHATEVER. SICK. THEY ARE ANTI GOLF"Odd Future was scheduled to open up for rap star Eminem at a concert in Auckland, New Zealand, on Saturday. But after NZ authorities got a whiff of OF's riot-starting tendencies, the edgy grouped was deemed as a threat to public order and banned from entering the country.(Photo: Taylor Hill/WireImage/Getty Images)

8 / 16

"Sasquatch" featuring Tyler, the Creator - Earl and Tyler unite to outdo each other in being the biggest Salvador Dali of rap, exchanging punchy cerebral verses over a slugglish, guitar-laced beat. No doubt, you will see the cypher. (Photo: Taylor Hill/WireImage/Getty Images)

Earl Sweatshirt (@earlxsweat) - "Proud of Frank."Odd Future memeber, Earl Sweatshirt is one of the many whom Frank Ocean was thankful for "keeping his secret." (Photo: Facebook)

9 / 16

"Centurion" featuring Vince Staples - On this cut, Earl and Vince upend hip hop music's staid ghetto desperado narrative, putting it in hypnotic and heavy-syllabic snapshots. "Ear-L double S, hear shells from the tec," Earl spits. "Hear him in full effect. Eat a d--k and cut a check." (Photo: Courtesy of Sony Music)

Earl Sweatshirt, Chum - In the wake of Tyler, the Creator's big 2011, it's sometimes easy to forget that Earl Sweatshirt was the main reason Odd Future first got noticed. When he leaked his debut, Earl, in 2010, at the tender age of 15, many were calling him a rhyme prodigy, and his subsequent disappearance — his mother sent him to a boarding school in Samoa — only grew his legend. If "Chum," the stark first single from his sophomore album, Doris, is any indication, he's ready to live up to the hype. (Photo: Facebook/EarlSweatshirtMusic)

10 / 16

"523" - Just when you thought it was old-fashioned for a hip hop LP to offer a beat track, ala "Chinese Arithmetic" (Eric B) or "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel," Earl gives us the hazy, Asia-inspired "523."  (Photo: Courtesy of Sony Music)

ADVERTISEMENT
"Uncle Al" - No this is not an ode to one of Earl's favorite unks. It's a good, ole-fashioned brag rhyme, back-packer style. "Verse, when it's green, I spit it. Show 'em that I meant it," Earl rhymes. "Hard rollin' with my n----s. Find a golden card, the chemist." (Photo: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter)

11 / 16

"Uncle Al" - No this is not an ode to one of Earl's favorite unks. It's a good, ole-fashioned brag rhyme, back-packer style. "Verse, when it's green, I spit it. Show 'em that I meant it," Earl rhymes. "Hard rollin' with my n----s. Find a golden card, the chemist." (Photo: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter)

"Guild" featuring Mac Miller - Without this cut explictly saying it's an ode to all the cannibus lovers out there. You'll get the picture through the haze of the trippy, sluggish track thumping under Earl and Mac Miller's references to that green stuff. (Photos: John Ricard/BET; Roger Kisby/Getty Images)

12 / 16

"Guild" featuring Mac Miller - Without this cut explictly saying it's an ode to all the cannibus lovers out there. You'll get the picture through the haze of the trippy, sluggish track thumping under Earl and Mac Miller's references to that green stuff. (Photos: John Ricard/BET; Roger Kisby/Getty Images)

"Molasses" featuring RZA - Wu-Tang's RZA chops up a kung fu-inspired beat — replete with a chanking guitar riff — and plays a supporting role to Earl's stream-of-conscious flow. Amidst the verbal acrobatics, the two are talking of sexing a woman's freckles off.  (Photos: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter; Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

13 / 16

"Molasses" featuring RZA - Wu-Tang's RZA chops up a kung fu-inspired beat — replete with a chanking guitar riff — and plays a supporting role to Earl's stream-of-conscious flow. Amidst the verbal acrobatics, the two are talking of sexing a woman's freckles off.  (Photos: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter; Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

"Whoa" featuring Tyler, the Creator - Earl and Tyler lob verbal grenades over a synth-infused boom bap track that snakes around each verse. In other words, "Too pretentious to pretend that he could lose or spitting semen tubes of poop or twisting doobies full of euphemisms." In a phrase: mental gymnastics. (Photos: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter; CV_imageSPACE/Splash News)

14 / 16

"Whoa" featuring Tyler, the Creator - Earl and Tyler lob verbal grenades over a synth-infused boom bap track that snakes around each verse. In other words, "Too pretentious to pretend that he could lose or spitting semen tubes of poop or twisting doobies full of euphemisms." In a phrase: mental gymnastics. (Photos: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter; CV_imageSPACE/Splash News)

"Hoarse" - Another blurry track accompanied by Earl's Molly-simulated cadence. The cut sounds like its sippin' some sizzurp.  (Photo: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter)

15 / 16

"Hoarse" - Another blurry track accompanied by Earl's Molly-simulated cadence. The cut sounds like its sippin' some sizzurp.  (Photo: Earl Sweatshirt via Twitter)

"Knight" featuring Domo Genisis - Like "Chum," this closing cut is an introspective song with Earl and Domo thinking about their respective journeys to fulfilling their dreams. "With a few exceptions," spits Earl, "I'm living honest. Except that I promised my momma I would finish college [and] stop chasing profits. Sorry, momma, I ain't forget about it." (Photo: Courtesy of Sony Music)

16 / 16

"Knight" featuring Domo Genisis - Like "Chum," this closing cut is an introspective song with Earl and Domo thinking about their respective journeys to fulfilling their dreams. "With a few exceptions," spits Earl, "I'm living honest. Except that I promised my momma I would finish college [and] stop chasing profits. Sorry, momma, I ain't forget about it." (Photo: Courtesy of Sony Music)