Earl Sweatshirt did not go to jail. He returned home in February 2012 from a reform school located in Samoa.
Earl's reform-school respite wasn't public knowledge at first, and while he was gone he had become a sort of music-biz urban legend, complete with a "Free Earl" fan campaign and a media manhunt.
In Samoa Earl was taking courses and speaking with therapists. He swam with whales and earned a scuba diving license, watched every episode of “The Mentalist” on DVD, put his classmates onto Lil B, began learning how to play piano.
He read Manning Marable’s Malcolm X biography and Richard Fariña’s counterculture fiction. He wrote rhymes. Most of his verse on “Oldie,” his one contribution to “The OF Tape Vol. 2” (Odd Future), released in March, was written while he was in Samoa, before he knew if he’d ever have a song to put it on.
He’d let his friends know where he was when he got to Samoa but was only able to communicate sporadically. As part of the Coral Reef curriculum he also performed community service, spending time working at Samoa Victim Support Group, a center for survivors of sexuąl abuse, including children.
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