Earl Sweatshirt, Wednesday night at the Granada

Two years I’ve been missin’, livin’ life, raps Thebe Kgositsile on “The Mint,” the second single from his 2018 album Some Rap Songs.

Kgositsile, a Los Angeles rapper better known as Earl Sweatshirt, isn’t one to rush his creative process, despite the voracious nature of his fanbase. He first gained that fanbase as a member of the notorious skate-rap crew Odd Future. (The slogan “Free Earl” appeared on OF t-shirts, in songs, and was shouted incessantly at shows after Earl’s mother sent him to boarding school in Samoa, just as his star was beginning to rise.)

As fans have come to understand, every time Earl returns, he’s a little bit different. Before his first time away, he was known as a prodigious teen with a knack for penning some of the most gruesome shock raps that hip-hop had heard in years. His first songs after returning in 2012 and 2013 disappointed many fans expecting the same outrageousness of the “Earl” tape. But at the age of 19, Earl was already confident in his artistic visions, and to this day hasn’t released the same album twice. The masterful 2015 album I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside was a mournful affair, but the Earl present on Some Rap Songs, and at Wednesday night’s sold-out Granada concert, shifted from the hopeless depressive of four years ago to a slightly more hopeful, semi-hermetic alt-rap shaman.

Earl appeared on stage less than five minutes after the evening’s final opening act and got straight to rapping. He paused only a few times during his 47-minute set — to thank his fans, request that they hit their “meanest woah,” playfully berate us for smoking mids, and let us know when it was time to do “a big sad song.”

The set list consisted primarily of tracks from his two most recent albums. The cuts on Some Rap Songs veer more into the territory of woozy, lo-fi beatmaking and weed-soaked avant jazz, but still mixed well with the dark, ethereal offerings of the previous album.

Sing-alongs often prove to be the most universally memorable moments of a pop concert, but the sing-alongs at this show were special in a particular way. Most of Earl’s recent output relies little on choruses or hooks, and some of his raps are so dense that it’s difficult to commit to memory the lyrics of an entire song. At the Granada show, the next fan over might rap back a line, and you the next. Watching the people around you connecting with different moments in a sad rap song (but sometimes the same ones as you) was affirming, even redemptive. “Faucet” (that “big sad song”) was a prime example of this. The negative space in the song filled the (very sweaty) room, allowing fans to sway along and throw up their favorite somber bars as they took a moment to cool down. There is something profound about a room full of people connecting over mutual pain to music best suited for late nights in one’s room alone.

The lyrics of the earliest Earl material repelled most women who came in contact with them, so his recent acts of empowering female peers was sweet to witness. (The Some Rap Songs’ cut “Azucar” mentions the respect he’s developed for black women). He also stood side stage and vibed along for a few moments while opening acts Bbymutha and Liv.e performed.

Bbymutha’s rowdy, post-SoundCloud hip-hop brought about some mosh pits, and there was much grooving for Liv.e’s sex-posi neo-soul (and plenty of raunchy jokes from each). But their levels of visual inebriation created multiple awkward pauses between songs that killed any momentum they had built up.

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Photos by Aaron Rhodes. On Twitter: @introfreemind.