Some Rap Songs, the third album by Thebe Kgositsile, aka Earl Sweatshirt, begins with the phrase “imprecise words”: a mission statement giving way to the first splice of soul loop and our weary narrator, pensive as ever, groggily victorious as if he’s waded through himself and finally made it ashore. In this life, one can anticipate a moment on the horizon when they’ll be drowning again; the Earl we meet now, almost four years since his previous album-length transmission, knows this with certainty. Our grappling with grief and relief comes with the price of the ticket. But as he accepts these words as imprecise attempts, he finds freedom and builds a home. These 24 minutes were originally intended as an olive branch to extend to his late father, the renowned poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, who passed in January of this year before hearing the album. It’s a painful, damning cliché: a frayed relationship between father and son, the latter’s intentions to turn a new leaf interrupted by the inevitability of death, reconciliation never found in our living state.

Considering the landscape he’s returned to, Earl Sweatshirt’s granted the luxury of time: increasingly rarefied air granted only to an ever-shrinking handful of musicians — especially hip-hop artists — in the algorithm age. He speaks his peace, retreats from fame, and returns when he has something to say; the times appear to dictate the opposite, to be omnipresent no matter what you’re saying or doing. Some Rap Songs dabbles in the times with its brevity, packing Earl’s emotional weight into compact spaces. The songs arrive, speak loudly and evaporate. There’s virtually no choruses, almost no 808s — just bars in a land of chops, loops and warped frequencies. Where Earl’s been praised for the tenacious stylings of his youth, often marred with unsavory and downright violent content, he’s traded fantasy for the densely autobiographical without coding his story behind his verbosity. The little things are noticeable: He says “bitch” one time on this album. He thanks Black women, addressing the Black women in his life in many moments. He recalls his mother’s memories with a new perspective no longer rooted in spite. If one’s heard his collection of stray drops from previous years — notably “Balance” with Knxwledge, and the self-produced “solace” and “Wind in My Sails” — Earl’s littered his path with clues for the fully-realized MC he’s become on SRS. He’s a direct, potent spitter, weathered by life and infatuated with death, granting the listener access to the grounded truths he’s found and grotesque nature of pain we may not deserve access to.