Earl Sweatshirt has returned from hiatus with new music, a 2022 co-headlining tour with Action Bronson, an album on the way, and some insight into what he’s been up to lately.

The 27-year-old rapper is prepping the release of his forthcoming studio album Sick! — which is scheduled to be released in January 2022 via Earl’s indie label Tan Cressida Records. He recently spoke to Rolling Stone about a variety of topics, including how becoming a father influenced the creation of Sick!

“I don’t have an ‘I love you, son’ song on the joint,” Earl told Rolling Stone. “I’m not going to sit here and lie to you, bro — I’m a young dude. I had a weird beginning to my adulthood. As a kid, and when I went away and shit, a thing that I had to fight for was my sense of self and my own voice, because I was the type of nigga to put that away for the group because I had self-esteem issues and shit. A thing that was hard-fought for me was my own voice. I patted myself on the back for being able to say, ‘Yo, I’m hungry.’”

“So this has been another crash course in the fact that this shit ain’t about me no more,” he continued. “As much as it is me, it’s the maintenance of me so that the person that learns from me the most isn’t learning a whole bunch of bullshit. The practice of sacrifice.”

Earl first revealed to the world/Internet he was a father in July. He posted a tweet which read: “i thank God everyday that my son is a pleasure to be around. he save his greatest challenges for his strongest soldiers and he know im not strong enough to be locked in with a bad vibes baby.”

“yall already makin too much hulaballoo about the situation and yall makin me nervous,” he tweeted. “i was just sayin that my son is a cool dude to be around, a baby thats aware of his surroundings and inquisitive.”

Last month, Earl gave fans a taste of his new Sick! album by dropping the Black Noi$e-produced “2010.” Just days ago, he put out another track expected to be on the album titled “Tabula Rasa.” Both songs are sincere reminders of how talented Earl is lyrically and why he’s been seemingly on his way to superstardom since he was 16 years old.

Within his interview with Rolling Stone, Earl mentioned that he’s “absolutely” grateful to have avoided “massive amounts of fame and stardom” in his career. “There’s some part of me that respects the science of things, of the up-and-down science — of how it goes up, it’s coming down,” he said. “I don’t know, as someone who actually studies science, I’m sure there’s a term for whatever type of force it takes to keep something that rapidly ascends up. It seems like things are wider on the bottom and more narrow on the top so they could fall off.”

The Odd Future alum also revealed that he “scrapped a 19-track album” because it had a “really optimistic energy towards it” and “felt gross.” “I was rapping, rapping, on every single song,” he said. “It felt political, like a mayoral campaign.”