- Record Label: Tan Cressida/Warner Records
- Release Date: Aug 22, 2025
Buy Now
| Buy on |
|
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
Aug 27, 2025This is a new, astronomically high benchmark in a catalogue comprised of fantastic bodies of work — and a rare moment where you can feel a generational artist at the height of their powers in real time.
-
Aug 27, 2025There’s so much musical and personal inspiration colliding at once, you can feel the passion even when you can’t quite crack it all.
-
Sep 11, 2025Though there's an element of dark humor to the album -- note "Gamma (need the <3)"'s lyrical reference to Michael Haneke's home invasion satire Funny Games -- there's still a lot of sincere joy expressed in these songs, even if it isn't always obvious on the surface.
-
Aug 29, 2025Live Love Laugh is the kind of rap mastery that shuns maximalism for pristine, unadorned poetics.
-
Aug 28, 2025Live Laugh Love confirms his legacy. With a reputation like that, Earl has earned his stripes—all while remaining totally unburdened by the typical powers that be. When he returns out of the blue with a 24-minute-long treasure trove like Live Laugh Love, you can’t help but pay attention. And you’re better off for doing so.
-
Aug 27, 2025The tracks are skeletal, repetitive and fuzzed-out to the point of abrasion; it could be an easy mistake to think they’re disjointed sketches. In truth, they cohere like a shattered mosaic of memory, pieced together into a triumphant chronicle of growth.
-
Aug 25, 2025While 2018’s Some Rap Songs and its 2019 follow-up EP, Feet of Clay, were both profoundly pessimistic works, Live Laugh Love sees him reimagined as a benevolent, hopeful, if slightly withdrawn, figure. And he sounds right at home.
-
Aug 22, 2025‘Live Laugh Live’ is a rap Escher diagram, a Greek maze with MC as Minotaur; it extends Earl’s world, and invites you forward with every step.
-
Aug 22, 2025Tracks unexpectedly short out or crash into each other. Live’s bright-hued synth backing suddenly starts glitching midway through the track, the beat stuttering, the rhythm of Sweatshirt’s rhymes completely changing. But if you give yourself over to the album’s weird logic, it’s an enrapturing way to spend 25 minutes.
-
Aug 25, 2025Earl is having more fun with spinning bars out of his complex experiences, be they traumatic or joyful. Even his simplistic flexes ring out louder than the hardest lyrics from mainstream rappers.
Awards & Rankings
There are no user reviews yet.