Earl Sweatshirt's New Film Nowhere, Nobody Is Packed With Symbols (We Think)

By Trey Alston


Earl Sweatshirt has released one of the weirdest but refreshing videos of his career. As well as the announcement of a tour in support of last year’s Some Rap Songs album, the rapper released an eight-minute experimental film titled Nowhere, Nobody that features snippets of songs from the album. It is, at once, confusing and mystical. We’re still attempting to prepare sense of what we just saw.


Nowhere, Nobody starts with a kids' basketball game where Earl is the coach, arguing with referees about both bad and missed calls. Soon after heading house, he takes a second to stare at the bust of a statue that sits his lawn. From then on, the bust becomes something of a central character.


there really are scenes of baby statues being painted green, Earl cleaning tree branches off another statue, the rapper sitting in a bathtub in deep thought, and another statue being destroyed. It’s heavy stuff and there’s cinematic and symbolic qualities that beg the viewer to look a beneath the surface of what they’re viewing.


The film was directed by Naima Ramos-Chapman and Terence Nance of HBO's Random Acts of Flyness. It stars Phillips E. Walker, Semere-Ab Etmet Yohannes, Maddox Dutton, Ian Randolph, Aria Williams, Lisa Gains, and LaDiamond Blue.


Earl’s upcoming tour kicks off at the end of March in New Orleans and wraps up in June in London. MIKE, Liv.E, Bbymutha, Black Noi$e, and Na-Kel Smith will be joining him. Hopefully before then, we can get an explanation of what the heck is happening in the film.