“Given the current climate of nixed rapper endorsements, it’s not hard to imagine a rhyme like that causing trouble for Earl down the line.” writes SPIN magazine in a bit on Earl Sweatshirt’s ‘Hive’ clip.
So the only problem they see in these lyrics is that they could make Earl lose potential money from advertising? Meow.
“Come around, we gun ’em down, bodies piled, Auschwitz.”
In the same verse Earl losely drops words like ’88’, ‘death row’, ‘gas’ and ‘jewish’ and thus somehow plants a whole semantic Nazi mine field. When he says ‘if this was ’88, I would have signed to ruthless’ it evokes a double meaning: Him signing to the side of the Nazis (= the ruthless ones) and him signing to the record label Ruthless that was active in the late 80s. Ach, I don’t even want to think any deeper into this. Wonder how others read those lyrics and the whole album’s. But I know: First rule about hiphop lyrics is we don’t talk about hiphop lyrics.
Why can’t there be one good hiphop album that I can enjoy without stumbling about cringeworthy or questionable bits?! From a pure “music as sound and songwriting”-perspective I really like ‘Doris’. Feel free to recommend me edgy hiphop with great lyrics. No tame safe stuff, just not biting those who are already kind of down.