Back in 2013, rapper Earl Sweatshirt was best known as a prodigiously young and mysterious member of Tyler the Creator’s west coast rap collective Odd Future. Joining the group when he was 15 and spitting dextrous yet shockingly violent verses on their early mixtapes, Sweatshirt (real name Thebe Neruda Kgositsile) swiftly disappeared almost as soon as the collective came to prominence.
His time out of the spotlight was a result of his law professor mother sending him to Samoa to attend a school for at-risk teens. Upon his return in 2013, now 19, he produced a stunning and deeply mature debut album, Doris. Gone were the sexual assault fantasies and instead Kgositsile employed his signature drawl on sludgy tracks that exposed his relationship with his absent father, his friendships and the frantic state of LA.
A decade later, Kgositsile now takes the stage of London’s KOKO to mark the 10th anniversary of this formative debut. In the years since, he has cemented himself as one of rap’s most distinctive voices, applying his artful and rapid-fire rhymes to sharp instrumentals that explore everything from his new status as a father to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Still, there is a special joy to the early brilliance of Doris. Playing the majority of the record’s 15 tracks in fragmented bursts over the course of his 90-minute set, Kgositsile tests the crowd’s lyrical knowledge since DJ Black Noise’s backing tracks are so loud you can barely hear his words. The writhing, volatile audience are unfazed by their moshing or the volume, spitting faithful hooks to favourites like Burgundy, Sunday and Chum while Kgositsile prowls in front of a white strobe.
The bass hits and the rapture is real as he launches into the tooth-rattling percussive minimalism of Hive, before switching into the shouted acronyms of Whoa. Unlike the New York and LA iterations of this tour, there are barely any special guests, only producer Alchemist briefly appearing to tease their new collaborative album Voir Dire. It confirms that this show is squarely about a past and possibly lost moment, a mumbling celebration of finely-wrought syllables that brought about the birth of an artist.
