Live music review: Earl Sweatshirt

Academy, Dublin

The rapper otherwise known as Thebe Neruda Kgositsile is not your everyday hip-hop sensation. Earl Sweatshirt’s mother is a Los Angeles law professor, his father, Keorapetse Kgositsile, one of South Africa’s best-known poets. He grew up in southern California, but Kgositsile’s formative experiences were a distance from the gang violence and poverty of West Coast rap.

Just 19, Earl Sweatshirt was introduced to us as a member of the LA ‘collective’, Odd Future. However, his part in the outfit’s notorious rise was reduced to a cameo when his mother, aghast at his unruly circle of acquaintances, packed him off to a boarding school in Samoa.