Californian rap cult hero Earl Sweatshirt has been gone for too long. Earl hasn't released an album since 2015's I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside, and he hasn't exactly been keeping himself in the public eye, either. This past summer, Earl cancelled a number of tour dates, citing anxiety and depression. Earl's father, the poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, died earlier this year, so that's entirely understandable. But it's still great to see Earl reemerging with new music.
Last week, Earl performed at the all-star memorial show dedicated to his late friend and collaborator Mac Miller. He also showed up with a cruelly brief cameo appearance on Vince Staples' excellent new album-or-EP-or-whatever FM! For the past few days, he's been sharing short teasers of new music on YouTube. And now, blessedly, Pitchfork points out that he has finally come out with "Nowhere2Go," a full new song. (After those teasers, some of us were hoping he'd just go ahead and put out a whole new album today, but we'll take a song, too.)
"Nowhere2Go" is less than two minutes long, and it's a dense and expressionist churn of a song. It suggests that Sweatshirt may be moving in an even more abstract and fractured direction than his last two albums, which were already plenty dense and fractured, suggested. It's also kind of beautiful. Right now, "Nowhere2Go" is only out on Apple Music, but if you're signed in, you can listen below. (UPDATE: It's on YouTube and Spotify too.)
Hopefully, there's more on the way.
