Chance the Rapper and Earl Sweatshirt Are Rap Dads Figuring It Out

Earl Sweatshirt and Chance the Rapper have entered their 30s from opposite sides of the same crossroads. Two prodigiously gifted MCs who were a touch nerdier and wordier than their peers, both got their start during the tail end of the blog era. Earl’s self-titled debut single is structurally and thematically vicious, a winding display of horrorcore aggression cranked to Jackass levels and calcified into pebbles thrown at encroaching adulthood. On his own debut single “Juice,” Chance leaned into a whimsy warped by acid tabs, attempting to create a space where Lion King theatrics, religion, soulful hip-hop, and candy-colored footwork collide. Both possessed a searing self-awareness only exacerbated by their politically and artistically minded parents, and the senses of death lingering over all Black boys from Chicago and Los Angeles.

As their stars rose, and blog pages and Mediafire links turned into late-night TV appearances and high-profile record and licensing deals, they gripped their styles with all their might. Earl, fresh from Samoan boarding school, briefly rejoined Odd Future and burrowed into an increasingly insular musical world, while Chance embraced the crossover appeal that comes from working with gospel singer CeCe Winans, drill pioneer G Herbo, and chip brand Doritos. Chance’s formal debut album, 2019’s The Big Day, was meant to capitalize on this pull with a project that mixed contributions from Gucci Mane, Megan Thee Stallion, Randy Newman, and Shawn Mendes into a concept revolving around the excitement of his wedding day and forthcoming fatherhood. But the album was bloated and lacked the effortless charm of his previous work, and was so derided by critics and fans that it ground his momentum to a halt. 

Earl capitalized on his ascent in a different way. Projects like Doris and I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside skewed muddy and introspective, pulling more influence from the East Coast underground than anything from the Odd Future era. But it was 2018’s Some Rap Songs that served as a creative renaissance, a defiantly lo-fi project that cast anxieties and trauma against hazy beats from everyone from Navy Blue to Denmark Vessey to Earl himself. More or less shunning the spotlight, Earl continued down this road, chiseling his writing to the bare essentials while staying tapped in enough to forge creative allegiances with rising figures like Mike, Billy Woods, Pig the Gemini, and Lucki.

At 32 and 31 respectively, Chance and Earl are mirror images of that tender moment when commitment is staring you in the face on their new albums. Both men are rap superstars and young fathers of two, and their records revolve around the complexities of dealing with it all. But while much of Chance’s Star Line exists in and reacts to the wreckage of his divorce from high school sweetheart Kirstin Corley, Earl’s Live Laugh Love is informed by the rapper’s marriage to actress and standup comedian Aida Osman earlier this year. New chapters of life are unfolding, and both men are instilling their deep fear of fucking it up for themselves and their families into the music, to varying degrees of success. 

Chance seems to know that, unfairly or not, he’s playing from behind in the public’s eye. “I had a F-minus, but that’s behind us,” he says on “Star Side Intro,” acknowledging the elephant in the room quickly and quietly. For him, moving on means attempting to keep the whimsy that got him here while applying it to where he’s at now. Star Line was informed by trips around the world, particularly in Ghana, as well as the ever-changing landscape of Chicago. Some of the album’s boldest moments come from finding the middle ground between Chance’s family-friendly hip-hop and the grittier stuff on the margins of his world. 

Here, Chance’s most impactful writing comes from him questioning everything he held dear in earlier phases of his career. On the first verse of “Back to the Go,” he talks about the splintering of his family like he’s constantly taking bullets from planes and soldering on for the love of music; the “chicken scratch on [his] pad” and trips abroad somewhat soothe the loss. He doesn’t dwell on it for long, defaulting to the pun-heavy wordplay and sociopolitical musings that made him a star, but he sounds noticeably wearier, less willing to give the world the benefit of the doubt.

Star Line’s most spirited moments arrive during the second verse of “No More Old Men,” where Chance calls for Black solidarity and warfare if the world doesn’t ease up, and on “Letters,” when he grapples with his faith in God in the face of greed and corruption. He’s incensed by the mega-churches that value profits over parishioners, and he’s compelled to remind listeners of the racist Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing of 1963 that killed four Black girls. This is a far cry from the rapper who was uncritically giving it all to the Lord one album ago, resulting in some of Chance’s most potent and honest rapping ever.

Unfortunately, that can’t be said for most of the album. Chance is clearly interested in maintaining his musical balancing act, but the work coming from him and his braintrust of producers (DexLvl, Peter Cottontale, etc.) is feeling less inspired and more desperate to stay relevant. Several songs feature interpolations from the Black music canon—like Anita Baker’s “Sweet Love” (“The Negro Problem”) and  Indie.Arie’s “Video” (“Tree”)—that land somewhere between cloyingly cute and exceedingly corny. The scaled-up Lion King-core of “Space & Time” and “Link Me in the Future” don’t hit the same way songs like “Same Drugs” did back in 2016. For all its riotous pro-guns-against-police messaging, “Drapetomania” plays like a Kidz Bop version of one of guest BabyChiefDoIt’s songs, and the same could be said for the chintzy-sounding “Gun in Yo Purse” and “Burn Ya Block.” Any song invoking events like Red Summer and burning police precincts deserves an A for effort, but the music oscillates between the sounds that put Chance on the map and his awkward attempts at keeping up with the times. Chance’s return after six years is a big deal; too bad it’s marred by bland indecisiveness. 

Earl Sweatshirt arrives on Live Laugh Love in a more graceful but no less challenging position. The Free Earl campaign that sprung up in the OF days is the most he’s ever lost control of his own narrative—if anything, his grip’s only grown tighter. This is a rapper who’s never tried to be all things to all people, only ever following his own ears.He’s back in deep-fried soul loop territory with LLL, confronting the anger and confusion that’s been stewing in his brain since the venom-spewing of “Earl.” “Untouched rage stuck within from the bus days/I need the love, gang,” he admits on “Gamma (Need the <3),” the confidence in his delivery masking the hurt of the revelation. Later, on the Navy Blue-produced “Crisco,” Earl lingers on the memory of a stepfather who “beat the failure out me” and how his mother helped him control the raw feelings that came with it. As stark as these moments are, there’s every indication on LLL that Earl’s in a better place, thanks to the healing powers of family and rap music. 

Just listen to “Tourmaline” and how his slurred singing intertwines with the melancholy twang of Theravada’s beat. “Both my ears ringin’ with your love” is both a touching ode to his wife and one of the most heartfelt passages Earl’s ever written, the glow in his voice displaying his gratitude. Equally moving is a passage on the Child Actor-produced “Heavy Metal aka Ejecto Seato” where he mentions having a dream of his then-unborn son crawling on the ceiling; or on the closing track “Exhaust” when it all clicks into place: “No amount of sugar gon’ help with the taste/At the end of the day/It’s really just you and whatever you think.” Earl’s spoken often about how fatherhood forces you to deal with your problems before you can properly take care of a child, but here, it sounds like the message has unfurled for him.

When the trauma’s been processed, Earl sounds comfortable and ready to rap his ass off. His chisel-sharp writing is still intact, blunt and economical while still being colorful and funny: “Arm all in the thing like Vince Carter/Overall, y’all baby-shit soft/We first team all-league marksmen/Let it sing-sing on ya like a voice from East Harlem,” he raps on “Static,” taking on all comers from his comfy chair. That’s the main difference in approach between LLL and Star Line: a sense of control. Earl is arguably at the top of his craft, manning the personal storms and relishing his musical freedom. Chance has more mountains to get over, and is reaching into every corner of Black music to help him get there. I hear the same ennui coming from both of them, but Earl is content and firmly rooted in his journey, while Chance is adrift and trying to make sense of himself through liberation theory and rhyme. There’s no right way to navigate your 30s, especially when you’re responsible for lives other than your own, but it’s endlessly fascinating listening to two of the blog era’s most mercurial talents try to figure it out.