What’s up with the creepy artwork?
Has Earl embraced black metal? Not quite – although his latest sound is about
as inaccessible as black metal.
Last year, Earl released Some Rap Songs: an album of lo-fi, hookless, grooveless rough cuts that delved deeper into the
rapper’s depression. This latest EP sees Earl taking his slop-hop style to even
sloppier extremes. While the tracks on Some Rap Songs barely resembled actual
‘songs’, the album still managed to flow well, showing that it wasn’t
completely thrown together willy-nilly. By contrast, Feet of Clay has no
sense of track-to-track flow at all - and most certainly was thrown
together willy-nilly.
The EP opens immediately with Earl
rapping over distorted piano on ‘74’ with not even a brief intro to ease the
listener into the chaos. Just as the beat starts to take a melodic turn, the
track cuts away to make room for ‘EAST’. This horrendous second track sees Earl
not even attempting to stay on beat, rapping over a lazy looping accordion sample.
Once the looping accordion becomes utterly intolerable, Earl then cuts to the
third track ‘MTOMB’. The chopped-up soul sample offers some solace from the
noisiness, but the track is barely one minute long and Earl again doesn’t try
to stay on beat.
Things don’t get any less rough
after this. Even when guest Mavi arrives on bizarrely-titled track ‘EL TORO
COMBO MEAL’ with a relatively accessible delivery, Earl makes sure that the
listener doesn’t get too comfortable by layering his subsequent verse with anxious
noisy effects. ‘TISK TISK/COOKIES’ then teases the listener by demonstrating
Earl’s most rhythmic flow, while counter-balancing this with the EP’s most
challenging beat. And then the album ends with ‘4N’ – an almost five minute
track that I thought was going to be an actual fleshed-out song, but instead it
takes one-and-a-half minutes for the rapping to start and ends one minute early
only for the beat to play out for the remainder, so that there’s actually very
little rapping substance there.
The cryptic lyrics only add to the
conundrum. Genius has helped me to make sense of bars like: ‘it’s coming out
of the teeth/ streets flooded like the pants weren’t touching the sneak’ – but
even then you’re still left wondering how it all ties together. Fortunately, as
hard as they are to dissect, these lyrics make up the most redeeming aspect of
the EP, because they show a clear display of skill. Every word Earl uses feels
calculated, not just for its meaning but for the way it sounds.
Other aspects of the record can at
times feel lazy such as the aforementioned accordion loop on ‘EAST’ and many of
the off-beat flows. As a result, it becomes harder to get anything out of these
musical ideas, because it doesn’t feel as if Earl put any effort into them. The
EP intentionally more raw and rugged than Some Rap Songs – but he may
have gone too far this time in his pursuit of sloppiness.
★★★☆☆
TRACK TASTER: