Live Report: Earl Sweatshirt brings laughter and love to the Academy on his 3LWorld Tour

The line outside The Academy on Sunday wound its way far down the block. The glowing sign above the door explained why: Earl Sweatshirt was performing.

Earl Sweatshirt rose to fame as the one of the most promising rappers out of Odd Future, a group of young musicians and artists based in LA in the late 2000s, which also included Tyler, The Creator and Frank Ocean. Earl’s facility for wordplay and dense, dark lyrics attracted a large fanbase while he was still a teenager, and, after being sent to a boarding school in Samoa by his mother, he returned home to a cult following. As time has gone on the now 31-year-old’s music has become less mainstream and more experimental - his last two albums, though they received critical acclaim, have not charted on major popular charts, though he still has many diehard fans.

The show starts at 8:30, by which point the room is crowded. The opening act, Jadasea, comes on stage. He greets the crowd, then moves back to a computer at the corner of the DJ booth, and presses play. An R&B sample track starts playing, and the South London rapper moves forward to the edge of the stage. He starts rapping, performing to the crowd. The whole crowd is head bobbing along as he goes from his first to his second song, pausing briefly to tell the crowd to give it up for themselves. The crowd obliges wholeheartedly.

At a certain point, Earl Sweatshirt and DJ Black Noise come onstage, along with the show’s cameraman, Ian Lopez, and the show’s tour manager, and they all drink a round of Baby Guinnesses. After a few more songs, they drink another round, and Black Noise and Earl Sweatshirt stay behind the DJ booth, head bobbing and dancing with the rest of the crowd and mouthing along to the lyrics, as Jadasea finishes out his set.

Jadasea finishes his last song, and thanks the crowd. He daps up Black Noise, Earl Sweatshirt, and the cameraman, introduced as Lil Nitro, then heads back one last time to grab his Guinness. He raises the drink to the crowd, then turns and heads back behind the DJ booth.

As he raises his drink, the music fades out, and the lights dim. The R&B sample is replaced by the distorted, echoing sound of a piano moving up and down in ominous half steps (that same tension building interval used in the Jaws soundtrack). Lights flash - blue, purple, teal - and go dark. The stage is shrouded in smoke. As the lights flash, we catch glimpses of Earl Sweathirt. He moves out from behind the DJ booth. He daps up Jadasea one more time. He reaches for the microphone.

Earl Sweatshirt picks up the mic, and instantly, the warm electric guitar of ‘Riot!’ fills the room. The crowd cheers, and sings along to the melody. Behind him, a screen lights up with a graphic displaying the words “Live Laugh Love” written in cursive, and then a graphic with three interlocking stylised Ls. The overhead lights on stage come up, bathing the whole room in a light like sunlight as Earl greets the room.

Earl Sweatshirt at The Academy on February 15 2026. Copyright Maizy Kharrazian/hotpress.com

“Dublin, what the f*** is going on? Keep making noise for my brother Jadasea one time, please, please, please! My name is Earl Sweatshirt, all night, and this is my brother Black Noise, this is the 3LWorld Tour, man!” He pauses as he talks to bob to the music. “I don’t have a big speech prepared, man, all I’m gonna do is rap at you guys for like, one hour, and it’s gonna be nice, I swear to God.”

Earl Sweatshirt is very good at rapping. Laid back but not casual, his delivery is relaxed and yet emphatic, giving each syllable the proper emphasis, punctuating every line with precision, executing on every song, and making it look easy. He flows effortlessly over everything from warm, busy jazz/R&B tracks to stripped back tracks with just drums and a bass line you can feel vibrating down to your shins, his voice rising and falling, shouting, mumbling, growling. As he raps, his hands move in flowing, understated gestures that correspond to the lyrics. He slips easily in and out of talking with the audience after songs, alternately joking and sincere. (“It’s the 3LWorld Tour,” he says at one point. “If you have three hands, throw three Ls up in the sky.”)

Black Noise, too, is very good at what he does. He transitions smoothly between some songs, and descends into scratchy, static-y madness between others. He teases the audience, playing snippets from the start of their favorite songs then cutting the music, looping the first syllable of other songs over and over, building tension so that when the beat finally does drop, the crowd roars in approval. He and Earl Sweatshirt work in tandem throughout the set: Earl Sweatshirt will talk and joke when the beat cuts out in between songs, and other times will remain silent and allow Black Noise to go off on a musical tangent until it finally comes back home - to further approval from the audience.

Earl Sweatshirt at The Academy on February 15 2026. Copyright Maizy Kharrazian/hotpress.com

The setlist largely pulls from Live Laugh Love - the album referenced by 3LWorld Tour - but also pulls from Earl Sweatshirt’s other work: several songs from his previous album SICK are featured, as well as songs from his recent collaborative effort with The Alchemist, Voir Dire. There are some rap songs from Some Rap Songs, and his debut album, Doris, makes an appearance in the song ‘Molasses’. There are even some unreleased songs that he has performed exclusively on tour in the past.

This variation keeps the audience on edge, listening for songs they know. When they don’t know the songs, they listen, head bobbing along. When they do know the songs, they cheer, and shout along.

The whole feeling of the night is communal, and fun. At one point, he brings Jadasea back on stage and they perform a song together. At another point, he puts the spotlight on the DJ and has the audience cheer him on as he drinks a pint of Guinness and tries to “split the G”. Later on, his tour manager comes on stage, and the whole group does another round of Baby Guinnesses.

Earl brings the audience along too, including them in the performance. At the end of ‘Molasses’, he lets the audience take the last lines - “We could do this sh*t all night/I’ll f*ck the freckles off your face b*tch” - and when the audience shouts them back at him enthusiastically, he responds without missing a beat, pretending to be shocked.

“That’s how y’all feeling around this motherf***er? Man, that is crazy.”

Earl Sweatshirt at The Academy on February 15 2026. Copyright Maizy Kharrazian/hotpress.com

Earl finishes with the final song on Live Laugh Love, ‘exhaust’. As the song goes on, Black Noise drops the volume of the song, so that the song is carried through to the end on Earl Sweatshirt’s and the audience’s voices. The effect is powerful: “I get it now” arrives with the strength of a revelation. At the end of the song, Earl flows right into thanking the crowd. “I’m airmailing you strength, because I love you Dublin, make some noise for yourselves!”

He then goes on to instruct the audience to make some noise for everyone involved in the production, making sure every contributor gets their own recognition. He leads the audience through cheering for Jadasea, Black Noise, the cameraman, the tour manager, the venue staff, the bartenders in the back, the sound guys, the light guys, the security team, and finally, themselves one more time.

“You guys feel love, dog, is that good, y’all feelin a lot of love? That’s good? That’s good. I feel good about that. I love y’all so much. Ima see y’all next time.”

He goes around and hugs everyone on stage individually. Then, before he has even gotten offstage, he is overwhelmed by demands for an encore. He dutifully picks up the mic, and wryly observes that “the new generation of encore n****s don’t let n****s get off the stage or nothing.”

“So you wanna hear another rap song?”

The show finishes with TOURMALINE, another song from Live Laugh Love. The audience sings along to every word, right through to the final line of the song: “Both my ears ringing with ya love”.

As the song ends, Earl Sweatshirt makes a heart sign with his hands and shouts out to the crowd:

“Dublin - I love y’all forever!”