Review: On “Live Laugh Love,” Earl Sweatshirt is finally at peace

By Arman Saxena     9/9/25 10:58pm

Score: ★★★★

Key Track: “Heavy Metal aka ejecto seato!”

Peace is both a state and a farewell. On “Live Laugh Love,” Earl Sweatshirt sounds like an artist who has finally found both. For a decade, Earl has been hip-hop’s resident pessimist, rapping in hushed tones about absence, grief and alienation. 

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Now a father and married to writer-comedian Aida Osman, Earl seems to have shed his old skin. The trademark existentialism that once dragged his music down into the abyss now radiates with warmth and clarity. 

The album opens with “gsw vs sac,” a loose, almost playful track that doesn’t quite stick — but it marks a shift in Earl’s tone. Gone is the voice that groaned under the weight of its own thoughts. Here is a man at ease, unhurried. 

The real turning point comes on “FORGE,” where he floats over a reggae-inspired beat before rapping, “stick along for the ride long enough / we ending up fine for once, finally, fuck.” It’s the kind of line that reverberates across his discography, precisely because Earl has so rarely allowed himself this sense of relief. 

For listeners who remember the bleak self-portraits of “Chum” or “Grief,” hearing him declare contentment feels quietly monumental. That optimism deepens on “INFATUATION,” one of the record’s best tracks, with Earl sounding assured over a lush Harvey Averne sample.

Where his earlier work often dissected his fractured self-image, “INFATUATION” feels like Earl recognizing his own worth, basking in the rare comfort of self-acceptance. The album truly blooms in its closing stretch. 

“TOURMALINE” stands among the most genuine songs of Earl’s career, its lyrics weaving fatherhood and spirituality into a tender portrait of renewal. “Both my ears ringin’ with your love,” he repeats, as though anchoring himself in the stability he once feared he’d never find. “Heavy Metal aka ejecto seato” extends this revelation. 

Earl repeats “I released it” like a mantra, as if casting off the trauma and self-loathing that haunted his earliest work. For an artist whose most famous lyric was once “It’s probably been 12 years since my father left / left me fatherless,” to now rap about raising his own child — and finding fulfillment in that role — is not just autobiographical, but transformative. 

Even “exhaust,” with its stormy cadences, plays more like hard-won wisdom than despair. Earl acknowledges struggle, but the battles are no longer existential dead-ends; they are trials he’s lived through, lessons he’s integrated. 

“Live Laugh Love” closes with Earl sounding freer than ever before. It’s not that the melancholy has disappeared, but that it has been reshaped — grief no longer defines him, peace does.

The album is not only a creative rejuvenation but also a testament to survival, growth and release. For an artist who once embodied hip-hop’s loneliest corner, Earl Sweatshirt has come full circle. He has found his zone of peace, and this time, he’s decided to stay.

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