Earl Sweatshirt

Background

Thebe Neruda Kgositsile, better known as Earl Sweatshirt, was born on November 24, 1994, in Chicago, Illinois. He is the son of Cheryl Harris, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Keorapetse Kgositsile, a South African poet and political activist. He was eight when Harris and Kgositsile divorced. He attended New Roads Middle and High School in Santa Monica and went on to study further at the U.C.L.A. Lab School in Los Angeles. He had been fascinated by music since he was a little kid, often composing short beats on his own. However, in seventh grade, his interest turned into a passion, and he began posting short music clips on MySpace.

A year later, he was asked by Tyler, The Creator, to join Odd Future, an L.A.-based rap band. He was 15 at the time. After a year of working on music, he debuted with his mixtape, “Earl.” However, his mother wasn’t a fan of his extracurricular activities and sent him to a Samoan boarding school to complete his studies. Four years later, he returned to L.A. and eased into the scene with a handful of collaborations, such as with Odd Future and Frank Ocean.

He entered into a relationship with Mallory Llewellyn from 2012 to 2014. After breaking up with Llewellyn, he began dating “Pitchfork” journalist Rawiya Kameir, with whom he remained until roughly mid-2019, when Kameir revealed on Twitter that they had broken up the previous summer. In 2020, he posted an Instagram image of his sneakers next to toddler shoes, showing his fans that he had a child sometime during the year. He mentioned raising the child in July 2020 on Twitter. The child’s mother is unknown.