S. Samuel
Months after the publicized return of Earl Sweatshirt, the Odd Future group member has now announced plans to launch his own record label and put out his own solo projects.
While details are still developing, Sweatshirt’s new deal will allow him to use the Odd Future stamp on his music.
He’ll have his own imprint, Tan Cressida, to be distributed through Columbia. That places him in the Sony system alongside Odd Future, which was one of his priorities. He turned down offers with significantly higher advances and made sure that his contract allowed him to put the Odd Future logo on his albums. “I want it to look seamless,” he said. As for his mother’s concerns, “She knows she’s got nothing to worry about.” His way of coping with re-entry has been decidedly low key: whiling away hours at the Odd Future store, skating, making music with everyone in the crew. At one point he joked that he has to stop wearing the five-panel camp hats that are something of a crew trademark. He wants to work on three projects: his solo major-label debut, a collaboration with the producer Matt Martians and EarlWolf, a long-planned collaboration with Tyler. Of “Earl,” the song that made him a star, he said, “There’s not a time I want to listen to that,” describing it as sounding “like you skinned your knee.” (New York Times)
The rapper also talked about his time away from the music scene and turning into more of a risk taker.
When he first arrived in Samoa, he was taken to a waterfall, which some of the other boys jumped off, though to a newcomer it inspired fear. “If you didn’t jump off the waterfall, you felt” terrible, he said. “So then you started jumping off the waterfalls.” Doing so, he said, had given him new perspective, a desire to be more bold, and to trust in himself more. “I just treat everything like that,” he said. “If I don’t do this right now, if I don’t take this risk, I’ll never get this day back again.” (New York Times)
Back in March, the West Coast emcee discussed Odd Future’s “Free Earl” campaign.
“It’s been pretty crazy, watching them do them,” Earl said about his hiatus from the OF crew while holding four different microphones. While the group was busy breaking through, performing on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and winning Video Music Awards, Earl was attending the Coral Reef Academy in Samoa. Though his 2010 free Internet album Earl helped lay the groundwork for the crew’s future success, the OF wunderkind was left on the outside looking in. There was even a “Free Earl” campaign that fans championed in the MC’s absence. “It was difficult processing through all of it ’cause it was a lot goin’ on with it,” he told “RapFix Live.” As far as what’s next for Earl Sweatshirt: “I’ma do something hot,” he said sarcastically. (MTV)
He recently spoke on making a return to the entertainment industry.
“Were you talking to people, aware that s—‘s going bananas?” the venerable DJ asks an extremely timid Earl who was put in boarding school in June of 2010, just as Odd Future began their meteoric rise to fame. “I was aware, I mean, because … the Internet.” “Were you aware that you were missing out on something this insane? Were you pissed? Were you annoyed?” Peter Rosenberg responded. “Yeah initially, but then I also got to f—ing see that all this s— isn’t fun all the time.” Earl, of course, was speaking of the block that he grew up on. An area of Los Angeles where he could skate and mess around on the pavement until the sun went down. But with the group’s rise in fame, Sweatshirt can’t walk through his home turf without fans asking for pictures and autographs. (The Boom Box)
