Earl Sweatshirt

Thebe Neruda Kgositsile was born on February 24, 1994, in Chicago, Illinois. He was born to Keorapetse Kgositsile, a South-African poet and political activist, and Cheryl Harris, a law professor at the ‘University of California, Los Angeles.’

His parents were separated when Thebe was only eight. His father died in 2018, following a short illness.

Thebe attended the ‘UCLA Lab School’ in Los Angeles and ‘New Roads High School’ in Santa Monica. He started rapping when he was only eight years old.

He started creating music via his ‘MySpace’ channel and released his first set of tracks in 2008. The tracks were from his first mixtape titled ‘Kitchen Cutlery.’

He released his music under the name ‘Sly Tendencies.’ He, along with two of his friends, Loofy and Jw Mijo, formed a trio called ‘The Backpackerz.’

The trio planned on releasing a mixtape titled ‘World Playground’ but soon disbanded and went their separate ways. That was only the beginning of a grand rapping career for young Thebe.

In 2009, he was discovered by ‘Tyler the Creator,’ who invited ‘Sly Tendencies’ to join his hip hop collective ‘Odd Future.’ Tyler heard ‘Sly’s music on the latter’s ‘MySpace’ channel and reached out to him.

After joining ‘Odd Future’ he changed his name to Earl Sweatshirt. He also featured in various magazines such as ‘Spin,’ ‘Billboard,’ and ‘The Fader.’

In 2010, at the age of 16, he released his first official mixtape titled ‘Earl’ which was a self-released album. Despite being a success, Earl had to stop making music with ‘Odd Future’ for a while.

His mixtape dealt with a lot of obscene content and became the hardest videos to watch. Probably, this was one of the reasons why his mother decided to not allow Earl to be associated with ‘Odd Future.’

She made him go to a therapeutic retreat school named ‘Coral Reef Academy’ in Samoa. In an interview, Earl claimed that he was sent to Samoa because he got into trouble with some of his friends.