Earl Sweatshirt – Nowhere, Nobody

0:00 – The video opens with a Title and Credits page, and continues on to show Earl energetically coaching some kids in a basketball game. It seems his team is losing.

0:25 – He gets into an argument with the referee, which distracts him from the game and causes him to miss out on the turn around point where his team starts to score. Either that, or he’s distracting the referee to give his boys the advantage, and later it shows all of them grabbing the trophy, including the referee for some reason.

0:55 – Abrupt cut scene to Earl in a minivan. Scene is quieter, energy is slowed, and Earl is grabbing his things and going home. As the Camera follows him, it pans in onto the plaster bust of a naked individual. The gender is hard to tell, but it deeply resembles Earl.

2:00 – Earl replaces the statue. A bunch of reaching, open plaster hands replace Earl. Earl and the statue are now facing each other, and he’s listening to something as he curiously looks at this bust (of possibly himself). His eyes are open, and the bust’s are closed. A necklace can be seen on it which was not there before.

2:10 The scene abruptly changes again, now to a woman staring at a really large sculpture of a vagina, while the bust of gender-neutral Earl is facing away from the camera, to the corner. The woman begins to speak to and paint the sculpture of a baby green, adding color to the lifeless white. She turns away to look again at the organ, and smoke then comes out from it (possibly signifying birth or water break?). Screen flashes red, and she is painting the baby once more.

3:00 – The baby is now alive, with green eyes being the only remnant of the mother’s paint. The surrounding is now all white, and the sculpture is no longer facing the corner, but to the camera. A statement at the top of the screen reads

“a C.D.C report issued in December 2013 found that Black fathers were the most involved with their children daily, on a number of measures, of any other group of fathers”

3:10 – The bust (which no longer has a necklace) now faces another sculpture, covered with vines, which Earl proceeds to carefully move off using plaster hands. The personal yet impersonal interaction between the two is interesting. We see that it’s not actually a sculpture, but an older man (presumably his father) painted in white. The scene then changes back to the home of the woman, where a young girl cleans the bust in the corner in the same way Earl did to the man. The bust somehow changes positions, now facing frontward, as the camera shows a different angle to the girl cleaning the statue. The scene moves back to the older man, who is now bieng cleaned by a woman in place of and resembling Earl, with his same clothes and demeanor. It shows the man being covered again, and then shows Earl, man-version, though there are no longer any vines, still touching him with the plaster hands. The position of the man does not change. The necklace worn on the statue is now on the older man’s back. It seems Earl is earnestly trying to reach him, but the barrier of the plaster hands is the only way he can, or knows how, to try.

4:25 – The bust is now in a bathroom tub being cleaned by a man, which is possibly the same one that was covered with paint. From this scene on, the necklace does not leave the bust. The scene flashes red like once before, showing Earl and his team of kids for a second, and then switches to Earl moving chairs around in a house with curtained windows. A close-up scene of a man walking takes part of the screen for a second, and then disappears, like memories that don’t know where to go. I think earl is uncomfortable, and builds a tower of couches and chairs as a response. He doesn’t know how to deal with what he feels, and his house, once a home, doesn’t feel the same. The roof is bleeding as Earl speaks, showing that he, or his home, is deeply wounded.

5:50 – Earl lays in bed, fetal position, and then gets up and smiles at a picture of a man (probably his father) and a young boy, which then shakes, falls to the ground, shatters, and is instantly sweeped away. Their relationship is somehow interrupted, and maybe Earl didn’t deal with his emotions the right way in the beginning. Earl is now in the tub, and the woman who resembles him is now cleaning him with the plaster hands. I see the woman as another side of Earl, a representation of himself without his masculinity, which is possibly what stopped him from being able to directly connect with his father. He becomes more in tune with her, as seen in the scene where they mirror eachother’s actions.

7:00 – Earl is now alone in the bathtub, with two plaster faces on either side of him, an older woman and man (mother and father?). The scene cuts to Female Earl touching Gender-Neutral Earl with plaster hands again, then back to Earl being cleaned by his father, but with his actual hands. Quick flash of red, then back to the bust, then back to Earl, now alone again. Was it a dream?

7:50 – The camera slowly moves away from an open casket covered with a South African flag, and filled with plaster hands facing down. It was the only way that he got to know his father. He never got to develop a personal relationship with him without that barrier. The video then reverses, and walks closer to the casket again, showing the hands once more. The video ends.