I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: December 3, 2025] Earl Sweatshirt

After seeing Tyler the Creator earlier this year, I thought my daughter might also enjoy seeing Earl Sweatshirt, his former partner in Odd Future.

What was fascinating was that Tyler’s show was MASSIVE.  He sold out Wells Fargo Center.  He had two stages, lots of lights, and a whole routine.  Earl’s show was at Union Transfer and didn’t even have a backdrop.  There was no light show, just the venue’s lights.  And all of that is totally fine, it was just such a contrast.

Earl had been on the stage for most of the night.  Hanging out behind the DJ table, bouncing with the people around him.  But I didn’t know it was him until he came out from behind the table and started his set.

I was fascinated at how short his songs were. Riot! is about a minute. gsw vs sac was just over a minute.  He did 22 songs in under an hour.

Earl is a bit of a mumbler, but he has a lot of charisma and knows how to modulate his flow.  and yet overall, it’s still a pretty chill set.

Like with the others, there were people walking around, filming, dancing, smoking.  For Earl’s set a guy with a really big beard (Daryl, I think) walked around and got a shout out but didn’t actually do anything.

According to setlist, many of the songs were unreleased.  So when the short songs ended (abruptly) the crowd had to take a second to respond.  There was also a kind of pause where they played music and he talked to the DJ or something?  Everything about the whole night just felt like a bunch of guys hanging out rapping.  It wasn’t that it was unprofessional, it just felt totally relaxed and low key–much like Earl’s music.  Like friends hanging out.

The biggest reactions came from his songs from SICK! and of course, Molasses from Doris was a big hit with crowd rapping along.  Earl seemed to really enjoy the crowd for this song and they way they rapped back–“make some noise for yourself Philly.”

The tone picked up a lot when ZeLooperz came back out to rap on Vision and it made me laugh that Earl just kind of stood around watching him.  Earl is very very chill.  Then Cletus Strap came to the front and did one of his own songs while Earl acted out the lyrics somewhat–Earl has a verse on the record and did his own verse when it was time.

About half way through Earl’s set he recognized the DJ, Black Noise, who I don’t think was DJing all night.  It was very hard to tell what was going on most of the time.

When he announced the song E.Coli the crowd was super psyched–I understand his record with The Alchemist is quite a favorite.  It was pretty unusual for me to hear people rapping back at him.  Not singing, but more or less talking.  Fascinating.

There were at least two more medical situations (and it wasn’t hot in there or anything).  Earl started talking about how y’all need to drink water.  He also offered to buy granola bars for the city, LOL.

My daughter definitely didn’t enjoy this show as much as Tyler’s.  And that’s fair–she didn’t know really anything that was played during the night and it was a long, non-stop night.   She knows I hate to leave early even if the show isn’t going to change very much.  She asked if we could leave in like 15 minutes, but I looked at the setlist and saw that the show was only going to be about 25 minutes longer, so she agreed to stick it out.

When he finished the set, it didn’t seem like he was going to come back out for an encore.  I knew my daughter wanted to leave but I told her that if he didn’t come out in like a minute we’d leave.  I always think an encore will be a fun ending.

Earl came out and did (apparently) one half of the song Quest/Power (he did the Power side).  And that was that.  His encore was about a minute.  Crazy.  I’m not sure it was worth staying, but on the plus side, we didn’t stay for merch, we got out really fast and were on the road in about 5 minutes.  So we made up for most of that time, I think.

It was definitely up there with one of the least enjoyable concerts I’d been to.  I assume if I knew more of the music I would have been more into it.  I assumed it would be a fun show like Tyler’s (whose music I don’t really know either), but it felt more like I was a plus one guest at a party of close friends.

FiloTV recorded the whole set from the stage and you can see someone in the front row holding out vinyl for Earl to sign (I guess).  For like  the whole show (he didn’t acknowledge it).

Riot! §
gsw vs sac £
FORGE
King of Hearts (Unreleased)
Warrior (Unreleased)
2010 ∇
INFATUATION £
8/22 (Unreleased)
Sirius Blac (Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist cover)
Truffle (Unreleased)
Fire in the Hole ∇
Molasses ‰
Azucar §
Live £
The Mint §
Vision (with Zelooperz) ∇
I’m Not Really Trying* (Cletus Strap song rapped by Cletus)
E. Coli (The Alchemist cover)
Gamma £
TOURMALINE £
Word to the Truest (Unreleased)
Nowhere2go §
Shattered Dreams §
Exhaust £  (paused for medical emergency)
encore
Quest/Power [Power only]

£ Live Laugh Love (2025)
∇ SICK! (2022)
§ Some Rap Songs (2018)
‰ Doris (2013)