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Earl Sweatshirt

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Compresses more into two minutes than most rappers manage in ten — dense, muttered writing over loops that sound like they're decaying in real time.

Earl Sweatshirt is the recording name of Thebe Kgositsile, born in Chicago in 1994. His mother, Cheryl Harris, a law professor, raised him in Los Angeles after she and his father separated when he was six; he attended the UCLA Lab School and later New Roads School in Santa Monica. His father was the South African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, an often-absent figure who nonetheless recurs throughout his music.

He started rapping in seventh grade under the name Sly Tendencies, posting a mixtape called Kitchen Cutlery on MySpace and forming a short-lived trio called the Backpackerz. Tyler, the Creator found him through that page and brought him into Odd Future in late 2009, at which point he adopted the name Earl Sweatshirt.

He first drew attention as a teenage member of Odd Future, releasing the mixtape Earl in 2010 before spending a period at a school in Samoa. His father was the South African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile. He returned to Los Angeles in 2012 and released his debut album, Doris, in 2013 through Columbia Records, which reached the top five of the Billboard 200.

His albums include Doris, I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside, Some Rap Songs and Sick!, and across them his writing has grown denser and more compressed while the production has moved toward short, murky loops, often self-produced. Tracks are frequently under two minutes, with the vocal buried close to the beat rather than sitting on top of it.

After moving to Warner Records for the Feet of Clay EP in 2019, he released Sick! in 2022, a joint album with producer The Alchemist called Voir Dire in 2023, and Live Laugh Love in 2025, followed by a collaborative album with Mike, Pompeii // Utility.

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