Seemingly every time an Earl Sweatshirt album is released, it can feel like it carries with it the heaviest weight of the world. Be it his own grief or the sheer expectation mythicized from the rapper’s elusive nature, Thebe Neruda Kgositsile has succeeded in flow each time with ease with a continuous artistic evolution since his early years as a bedroom gloom sage and later on, a kintsuge-style rap innovator whose impression is still being felt within today’s rap underground.

More recently, however, with last year’s SICK!, Sweatshirt came to embrace a new found sense of lightness. That becomes all the more evident on VOIR DIRE, a collaboration with the Alchemist, that further clarifies Sweatshirt’s path moving forward. For the first time since forever, it sounds like he’s feeling easier in his introversions even if he’s still working through life’s big questions across the 25-minute listen which concentrates Sweatshirt’s focus behind minimal flash beats and soft soul production, relaxing his prose through illuminated eloquence.

We also get two collaborations with kindred poet, Vince Staples, as well as MIKE through it. They’ve never missed once in their natural chemistry, and when adding in the Alchemist element, you get some of hip-hop’s most fashionable in one molecular design. Maybe Voie Dire isn’t an event album or revelation like we’ve come to expect from Earl Sweatshirt’s work, but it certainly speaks clearly of a new kind of freedom in his approach to not just his art, but in his expression within it.

Highlights: “Vin Skully”, “Mac Deuce”, “The Celiphate”

Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist’s VOIR DIRE is available now on Tan Cressida / ALC Records / Warner Records.

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