voir dire

I few years ago I saw a video breaking down some of Earl Sweatshirt's lyrics line-by-line. I wanted to link to it here but sadly it was from a pretty small channel and I can't find it anymore. It introduced me to the concept of devices that are exclusive to music. I feel like I used to listen to music only using the tools we learn about in English class, thinking that was about as far as it goes. It feels dumb in hindsight to not have realized there are things people do with audio that written text can't accomplish, but I'm glad I know it now, and it always makes me happy to listen to an album and notice things I never would've found from reading.

On the new Earl/The Alchemist album Voir Dire I found myself noticing a lot of callbacks to his older material. I'm sure that this exists in literature as well, but I haven't read enough from a single artist to notice it and see value. The casual listening of music and varying points of emphasis make it really easy to remember strong lines from songs you've liked in the past, but I think I'd find it very difficult to recognize a sentence from even some of my favourite books in the context of another one (though this probably has more to do with me than the mediums). I think music, specifically Earl Sweatshirt's, is uniquely well-suited to recalling moments from the past. His releases are infrequent and his songs are short, so there aren't too many lyrics, and since the vocals aren't always clear, the ones that are really stand out. His wide vocabulary and careful writing couple to make it feel like if he's using an unusual word for a second time, it must be for a reason. And his approach to music itself is so personal that it makes sense for each album to be a development from the last, with each one being necessarily linked. Also I must say, I know this is actually quite common in rap but the instances I've noticed previously have been pretty surface level and sometimes just feel like recycling lyrics. Kanye West's "I wasn't supposed to make it past 25" on Saint Pablo is one example I really liked, but the frequency with which it's used on Voir Dire is really cool to me so I wanted to share.

On the first track, 100 High Street, he says "Tryna cop a HEMI like my bro did", referencing Titanic, the penultimate track from his last album SICK!, where he said "Bro just crashed fucked up his Dodge, now he shopping for another HEMI". The callback and continuity is obvious, but I think it's helpful for setting the tone of the album and as an indication to look for more of this going forward.
I've written about how Some Rap Songs is my probably my favourite album before, including my appreciation for how he starts his songs, so it's no surprise my favourite callback on the album is to the first line on The Bends: "Bend, we don't break". On 27 Braids, he updates this by starting the song with "Clean break tougher to make". Again, I don't wanna do any real analysis on here, but I think there's a lot of insight and growth to be found in comparing just these two lines, separated by 3 projects and nearly 5 years.
The last one I'd like to write about is the most heavy-handed. On Sirius Blac he says "Shorty saved me the piece I wanted; Loose change rattling in my pocket; Threw it back to the block where I found it". Loose Change is the closing song from The Alchemists album This Thing Of Ours, on which Earl Sweatshirt repeats a number of times "Save a generous slice for me". The new line can be heard in a couple different ways, and it's a bit unclear to me if the primary one is with "piece" or "peace". It's also interesting to note that these songs are surprisingly similar in construction; Repetition is rare in Earl's music, but both tracks are a similar length (might be the same but I don't wanna count) and close with a repeated 8 bar verse (although it's a bit less structured on Loose Change). This is the only track on Voir Dire with this setup but Dead Zone, which is actually the next song on the album, has a chorus which is similarly performed.

Other moments on the album that might be callbacks but might also be coincidental/not really worth reading into:

In writing/srs, I wrote a point about the applause motif on the album, so it's really interesting to see the "Round of applauses" line on Dead Zone. I actually didn't notice this until seeing the lyrics written out.
The outro on Mancala has the titular track from SICK! playing in the background
"Fire in the hole burnin out his soul" from Sentry is a clear reference to Fire in the Hole, the closing track from SICK!
Also on Sentry, Earl closes his verse with "It's time to eat", which is minor, but I feel comes up in a lot of his music. On the unofficially released but revered Solace he said "You can see it in my face I ain't been eatin", followed up on a few years later on Veins with "I've been eating good you can see it in my tummy". Earl's verse is followed immediately by MIKE's, who's also had this as a theme in the past, going as far as his 2017 album MAY GOD BLESS YOUR HUSTLE having a track called Hunger, which happens to be his most successful song to date.
Solace also features the line "It's raining a bit; I hope it's a monsoon". Dead Zone has "Blew a bag on it because I had to; Was coming out my hand and it's pouring like a monsoon". I really like this one as well.

There's more I've made note of but they're probably innocuous so that's enough lol. I've once again made a playlist below with Voir Dire in its entirety and all the other songs mentioned here. Also as a reminder, the coloured lyrics above can be clicked to hear the lyrics.

Posted: 2023-10-20