By Matthew Becerra, August 26, 2025
Rapper Earl Sweatshirt held a listening party at The Let’s Go! Disco in Los Angeles August 15, previewing his upcoming album “Live Laugh Love” that dropped August 22, almost two years exactly to his last album “Voir Dire.”
Inside the dimly lit bar were signs with the album’s name and pictures of Sweatshirt at both doors. There was also a dance floor and seats toward the back. Most people chose to stand as close to the DJ booth as possible, and others even behind or leaning on the booth.
A photo booth with the album cover and title attached was available and themed drinks were served. There were also zines full of pictures, poems, texts and other messages about his personal life with contributions from friends, family and other celebrities like his wife Aida Osman, skater and artist Sage Elsesser and comedian Dave Chappelle.
The event started off like most shows Sweatshirt hosts with his longtime friend and DJ Black Noi$e playing a set filled with a variety of artists from Luther Vandross to Chief Keef.
About halfway through the event, Black Noi$e asked the crowd if they were “ready to hear something new?” In response, the crowd erupted and flooded toward the front of the room as Black Noi$e started to play tracks from the unreleased album.
The music was a mix of what fans have come to expect from Sweatshirt, plus new sounds like experimental vocal mixes, energetic flows and sound effects to emphasize word play.
Production wise, instrumentals varied in tempo, but all had Sweatshirt’s signature underground sound, which mixed of sampling, interludes and spoken word sections.
Thematically, Sweatshirt’s work has grown with him, featuring topics such as fatherhood, which he has been covering in his last couple of projects. Now, Sweatshirt has a new perspective as he welcomed his second child, but first daughter, in the summer of 2025.
In between tracks, Black Noi$e made commentary and jokes like, “I can’t believe he named this sh*t ‘Live Laugh Love.’ It’s really a good time in life.”
After playing all the songs off the album, Black Noi$e said, “We’ll play it again, but I think I’m trying to bring my brother out.”
Fans loudly cheered and whistled as Sweatshirt’s team prepared microphones and played music to introduce Earl Sweatshirt. Instead, a friend of Earl named Gary Murakami came to the booth, picked up the microphone and started performing the unreleased songs.
Black Noi$e and others behind the DJ booth continued to refer to Murakami as Earl Sweatshirt for the rest of the night.
Event attendee Tiel Bowers thought it was dope they brought out a “variation of Earl.”
After performing Sweatshirt’s songs, Gary danced along with other attendees like artist ZelooperZ at the front of the crowd. Black Noi$e also continued to play a mix of music and closed the event off by telling the crowd to enjoy their night and to make some noise for the man performing as Earl Sweatshirt.
“I thought the event was cool,” event attendee Prince Obinma said. “I thought Earl would be here, but other than that it was intimate and chill.”
The event felt less like a traditional album listening party with his absence. But that’s on brand for Sweatshirt, as his last album “Voir Dire” was teased at unique Black owned locations in LA like Neighbors Skate Shop, which he is doing again for this album.
“My relationship with him is just being in LA, being in the same cultures of skateboarding, music and creativity,” Founder of Neighbors Tré said. “We played the album (“Voir Dire”) all day here just circulating Black energy.”
Sweatshirt has been pro Black his entire career, being the son of Keorapetse Kgositsile, an acclaimed South African poet and activist, and Cheryl Harris, a law professor and critical race theorist at UCLA.
Gustavo Galarza, a computer engineering student at Cal Poly Pomona, also participated in the previous rollout for “Voir Dire” through NFTs. That rollout included QR codes that linked to an NFT website, where Sweatshirt slowly revealed the track list.
“Because I was listening to it on that website so much, they gave me the song NFTs for free,” Galarza said. “With that it gave you credits you could use to buy stuff. I was able to get a signed t-shirt and a signed poster.”
After learning about Sweatshirt’s new album coming out soon, CPP students like Galarza and music industry studies student Giovanni Raimondo both shared excitement and said they relate to Sweatshirt a lot through his lyrics about struggles with mental health and growing up with Sweatshirt’s music as an inspiration.