Having emerged as part of Odd Future, Earl Sweatshirt became a fans’ favourite with tracks like Chum and WHOA. With a veritable truckload of hype behind him, the pressure was on to provide a solid debut album, and he looks to have surpassed himself.

“Doris displays some of those growing pains, but it also delivers a uniquely impressive collection of vicious beats and lyrics that make Magna Carta...Holy Grail sound like Marky Mark,” say Pretty Much Amazing in their review, while Pitchfork reckon “With Doris, Odd Future’s Odysseus is finally back and chasing the ghosts out of his head.”

The record has settled on a respectable 82/100 on Metacritic – a truly solid aggregate. “It’s a work as notable for its technical achievements as its nuanced themes, and that’s almost as impressive considering that so many artists lack in one or both of those fields,” posited Consequence of Sound.

It’s doubtful that Earl Sweatshirt paid much attention to the critics, though; Odd Future’s shtick requires a disassociation from the mainstream press as they kick and scream through the latest hip-hop drive. But if he did stop to see what people are saying about his music, he’d see mostly good things. “Where he has yet to master the art of making complete songs (“Uncle Al” clocks in under a minute long) and his diction tends to lacks clarity, Earl paints pictures in a manner more poetic than just about all within his peer group,” Hip Hop DX write in their review.

Listen to Earl Sweatshirt's Chum