Touted by his Odd Future brethren as the most talented rapper among them, 19 year old Earl Sweatshirt will be stepping up to the plate with the release of his debut studio album, Doris. So far, the lower key sound of album singles like “Chum” seems to be running counter-intuitive to the hype surrounding Earl, and the laconically sinister “Hive” is no exception. “Hive” hangs pretty tight to the murky sound of early hit “EARL”; a downtempo beat overlain with a quirky, hypnotically syncopated spitting style that seems to issue from Earl’s mouth like a series of commands . Earl sounds fairly sedate on “Hive,” which almost gives the violence of his lyrics an added sheen of psychopathy, as though his words are a series of thousand-yard stares.
