A long, intimate conversation about fatherhood, fascism, and his surprise new album ‘Live Laugh Love.’
“These days, a lot of the time, I’m happy,” said Earl Sweatshirt, almost conspiratorially. The announcement came nearly two hours into the conversation, like a revelation or the punchline to a cosmic, apocalyptic joke. We talked about techno-fascism, Scientology, death, inheritance, and artistic sacrifice, and this was where it led.
He demonstrated his happy face, arranging his mouth into a wide grin. A second passed and his expression, behind rimless oval glasses, remained fixed like a mask. This was happiness, with a current of anxiety and stress at the corners of his wide eyes. A very 2025 happiness, in other words.
Live Laugh Love is an eye roll-inducing phrase best associated with the decor aisle of a suburban department store, and yet it is the name of Earl Sweatshirt’s new album. The artist, who once rapped “my heart cold like the fucking carrots at the grocery store” has warmed (though he has a sense of humor about his own gloom, clearly). The album contains the prettiest music he’s ever made.
His wife, the actress and comic Aida Osman, delivered a healthy baby girl earlier this summer and Earl, 31, is ready to talk about all the visceral details. But this record is not a long-winded therapy session or saccharine ode to marriage and settling down. He still uncorks tough talk worthy of a hard-boiled novel, like the opening of “CRISCO”: “Gran Turismo, hop out the fishbowl with a fistful of cash and a lit bogie.” But on that same song he skates breathlessly through heavy thoughts about parenting and the many shapes fatherhood can take, not all of them kind or peaceful. “Pops was kinda janky, his replacement beat the failure out me,” he raps, taking in gulps of air as he pushes forward.
Live Laugh Love is a daytime record, in touch with the natural world, with memorable lines referencing minerals and the elements. He often recorded after exercising with friends, like the Queens-born producer and frequent collaborator Theravada, who contributed to almost half of the album, and though his vocals are sometimes tough to excavate from the off-kilter loops, like on the back half of “Live,” the album is clarifying, like a deep breath. The last lines on the record are a compassionate wish, albeit from a distance: “I’m airmailing you strength.”
This was my second conversation with Earl—the first was about billy woods— and the artist born Thebe Neruda Kgositsilehe was loose and discursive, honest and excited to riff on rap music and his life. (Two hours is about twice as long as the combined length of his previous two records.)
Talking about the birth of his daughter (he has a son from a prior relationship), Earl unfolded stories filled with awe and humor. A recent visit to the pediatrician turned into a routine about communication. “The doctor was like, ‘Look at her back!’” he said. “She literally said it like that. I was like, ‘What? Medicalize this language,’” he laughs. “Don’t say it like that.”
His daughter is “buff as hell,” he said, a proud father.At one point, we talked about how to live as an artist, and he described the jazz musician Sun Ra, who was notoriously merciless as a band leader. “The concept of removing things from a ship so that it can move faster—there are some people that are trying to go very fast,” he said. “They’re willing to throw everything off of the ship so that it can move faster in the wind. I grew up with jazz musicians, and because you’re not doing gangster rap or whatever the fuck, niggas is like, ‘you chill, you positive’—because you play the saxophone. But them niggas invented a lot of this shit. Sun Ra said I had to sacrifice everything to be myself, and I feel him.”
But Earl did not want to be like that.
“I come from it, and to me, it's corny,” he said.“My contribution to it is, be a little bit normal. Not all the way, right? I just had my daughter and I'm in Portland, musing about things. But be a little bit normal. Like, change a diaper. That’s it.”
Ross Scarano
Earl Sweatshirt
The last time we talked you were preparing for your baby. How’s the family?
I’m baby life-ing this shit up right now. We had our baby like a month, month and a half ago. It’s really a secret society, parents. With the ritual and everything, with the crazy blood fee. And then it’s like, OK, now go back outside.
Labor is the craziest shit I’ve ever seen.
I’ve seen dead niggas. I’ve seen people die. That shit is crazier than that, because it’s not death. Someone has to be like, “Oat milk, please,” after that—and it was just like the movie Hostel in that bitch. Me and Aida were just talking about that. Definitely for two weeks you don’t realize that you’re walking around like [haunted, thousand-yard stare]. Everyone’s like, “Congratulations, congratulations!” and you’re like [still wide-eyed, frozen]. That shit is hilarious.
Where are you right now?
Portland, and this shit is horrifying.
What part?
Downtown.
Downtown Portland is kind of gnarly.
It’s the scariest shit in my life, bro. As you climb up the Pacific Northwest, you start to see a theme. San Francisco is the Mecca of the tech revolution, and then it emanates upward and downward on the coast, to Seattle and up to here. And by the time you get here, it’s really colored by—I don’t know a lot about it, I just know that there’s the history of secessionism here, on some Texas shit.
Real anti-government militia stuff.
That is definitely the vibe when you get up here. If you want to get a feel for tomorrow… You got to scan your receipt to get out of the grocery store. A nigga with a pistol that was strapped around his thigh opened the door for me for Powell’s Books. Like, here, go get your James Baldwin book—read that up. Go get a banned book. But if you steal that shit, I’m going to shoot you in the head.
The last time I was in Portland was fall 2024, right before my kid was born. I was visiting college friends, like a last hoorah.
It’s a good one for that.
But troubling that it’s also a sign of America’s techno-fascist future.
If these aren’t Berlin vibes, then I don’t know what are. This thing where these formerly magnificent cities are now at this tense, awkward place, where people are trying to proceed with the cushy things, but the fascism is getting less coy, to say the least. I feel like I’ve been seeing other people say it, but you can definitely cross-reference this to other times when nations was about to do this. It’s weird, and people keep eating cereal.
But as a new parent, what am I supposed to do? I gotta go pick up my kid from daycare in two hours.
Oh, for sure. Kids are the best because you seriously know what you have to do. Having kids in this shit is so scary, but it’s not allowed to be scary.
I’m trying to balance those two realities of: This is scary; I’m afraid for the future my son may have. And then also I need to be happy and play with my son right now.
Literally. That’s what you have to do, scientifically, for your son’s best development. You have to play with him. And it has to look good.
I can’t have worry on my face.
We just read about the still-face thing. You heard about it? It’s in the parenting books and shit. If the parent is looking at them with a straight face, the baby will be in more distress, they’ll cry more, and then it makes it harder for them to learn. They don’t play as well, so they don’t learn as well.The other day I was playing music and at a certain point I was like, “Is this a happy mix? What the fuck?” Real happy, though, not abstractly happy. Not even So Much Fun by Young Thug happy. It was The Go! Team and shit. And someone’s like, “What are we celebrating?” I was like, I think I’ve just been with a zero-year-old for hella long, so my shit is like [jack-o-lantern grin, waves hand].
All the time. “Hey!”
Slept for 12 minutes. Hey! How we doing!? Someone’s screaming at you, like they’re being murdered. Hey! Hi! Yes! That’s good! Literally good job.
I have your literal shit on me, and it’s like, this is great!
You’re like, yes! Because the gas was crazy.
