For the last few years, Earl Sweatshirt has fought his way to clarity. His recent projects—most notably 2015’s I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside and 2018’s Some Rap Songs—waded through an abstract haze as he whittled complex thoughts down to bars that stick like tar to pavement. Striking a balance between the prosaic and the poetic, Earl’s writing gives you just enough information and details to form more questions than answers. It’s an alluring technique, and his latest single “2010” launches it into the stratosphere.

“Crescent moon wink, when I blinked it was gone,” Earl says over the synthetic whirs of Black Noi$e’s beat. “Left the crib smacked, no sheath on the sword/Made it by the skin of my teeth, thank God.” Snapshots of Earl’s past and present flutter through the song and leave residue on the brain: moving around with “five O’s like the Olympics”; childhood memories of his mother listening to Mary J. Blige; time spent with friends up north and at Temple University. “2010” is no less pensive than any Earl Sweatshirt song released in the last six years, but his words are clearer and more hopeful than they’ve been in a while. He’s looking forward to the future (“We got us a fire to rekindle”) and his voice has the same bravado as his recent work with the Alchemist, particularly the Navy Blue-featuring barnburner “Nobles.” He’s not out of the woods yet, but Earl is no longer drowning in his thoughts.