Music That Makes Me Cry

The Alchemist featuring Earl Sweatshirt and Billy Woods “RIP Tracy”

Earl Sweatshirt’s voice is deep, his cadence is precise, and he often writes in odd meters that disrupt expectations. He tends to use this as a distancing device – he frequently sounds cold, or dismissive, or fully misanthropic to the point of shutting everyone out. This is interesting, but what makes him compelling is the way he slips in little moments of vulnerability or warmth that break up the flat affect. This approach casts every feeling in sharp relief – he sounds more wounded, more angry, more depressed when the feelings are exposed through the vocal armor. He’s very well suited to The Alchemist’s production style, particularly on “RIP Tracy,” which conveys a similar mix of feelings but contrasts Sweatshirt’s bitter tone with a sentimentality, even if that’s only coming through between scare quotes in a sample. Billy Woods also shines here, wrapping the song on a verse that’s more nakedly emotional in the performance but goes even darker in the lyrics.

Buy it from Bandcamp.