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Music

What Is Earl Sweatshirt Trying to Tell Us?

The rapper has been hinting at new music on his Instagram all week.
KC
Queens, US
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Photo by Scott Dudelson/Getty Images

There's an interlude on Vince Staples's new album FM! titled "New earlsweatshirt." The track is not even 30 seconds long, but it satiates a feeling that fans of Earl have missed since his 2015 release I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside. Almost a week after FM!'s release, "New earlsweatshirt" seems more like an announcement than a teaser on Staples's album. It's the closest we've gotten to a formal announcement because the rapper has only been dashing out cryptic Instagram teasers since Friday. His latest, a snippet of new music with a caption that reads "NOWHERE 2 GO TOMORROW TAP IN" is the most direct he's been all week.

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On Monday, he previewed a soul-inflected teaser that borrows from Tommy Davidson's Black Dynamite character, Cream Corn. The little we do hear distorts Davidson's voice against some pretty gnarly guitar strings. But damnit Earl, there just isn't enough in this preview.

On Tuesday, he hit us with another hint. Please, just give it to us all at once. This is torture.

There's no way of knowing whether these three clips will all be a part of "NOWHERE 2GO," though the guitar and visuals from Earl's Instagram seem to suggest so. The material on his Instagram sounds a world away from what we heard on FM! and there's no telling exactly what Earl will sound like in 2018.

Kristin Corry is a staff writer for Noisey. Follow her on Twitter.