Earl Sweatshirt

Born in 1994 in Chicago, rapper and producer Thebe Neruda Kgositsile, known as Earl Sweatshirt, grew up in Los Angeles in an environment shaped by poetry and politics, with a South African writer father and an academic mother. He came to prominence within the Odd Future collective around 2010 by releasing the online mixtape 'Earl' (2010), noted for its raw and introspective tone. After a spell at a boarding school in Samoa, he returned to Los Angeles and released his debut studio album 'Doris' (2013), establishing a dense rap style filled with cryptic imagery and personal narratives. 'I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside' (2015) and then 'Some Rap Songs' (2018) further tightened Earl Sweatshirt’s aesthetic around lo-fi productions, soul and jazz loops, and deliberately fragmented structures. Active on the American independent rap scene, he has collaborated with artists such as Tyler, The Creator, Vince Staples, The Alchemist, MIKE and Armand Hammer, and continued this experimental thread on the EP 'Feet of Clay' (2019), the album 'Sick!' (2022) and the joint project 'Voir Dire' with The Alchemist (2023).