Collaborative album
Voir Dire pairs
The Alchemist's soul-sampling, mellow roasted production with
Earl Sweatshirt's lucid dreaming flows, an unlikely but surprisingly complementary match.
Earl's 2018 album
Some Rap Songs changed certain sectors of hip hop forever with its fragmented production and fever dream rhymes, pioneering a sound that didn't quite fit into lofi circles but was more alien than almost any other album that made it to the top 20 of that year's Billboard charts. His work since has been just as experimental if not more, so it's almost a shock to hear him on
Alchemist's relatively tame beats like "Mac Deuce" or the synthy R&B loop of "Heat Check." If anything,
Voir Dire proves that
Earl can shine in any context, bringing an inventive, circuitous diagram of rhymes to
Alchemist's deep-groove riffs on "Vin Skully" and transforming the straightforward gospel pianos and bumpy drums of "Mancala" (one of two tracks on the project featuring
Vince Staples) into something puzzlingly cerebral.
MIKE brings out even more of
Earl's cryptographic rap tendencies when they duet with head-spinning bars on "Sentry."
Voir Dire pushes the bounds of both
Alchemist's old school warmth and
Earl's heady verses, landing someplace new that neither would have gotten to on their own. ~ Fred Thomas
