Live Review: Earl Sweatshirt, Clunk Clunk

That said, Sweatshirt's Perth fans were not dismayed. In fact, they were lining up outside Villa hours before doors opened at 9pm. Local DJ Clunk Clunk kicked things off, sticking mostly to trap and new school hip hop jams. He played for about an hour before Sweatshirt's DJ took the stage and punters rushed to get closer. The Weeknd lookalike warmed up the crowd with more trap before Sweatshirt took to the stage around 10.30pm.

The young rapper performed crowd favourites from his first album, Doris, including Molasses, Guild, Burgundy and of course one his biggest hits to date, Hive, during which he encouraged his audience to scream the track's standout line, "Like it's nothing, 'cause it's nothing, bitch!", along with him. Describing each of these performances individually seems redundant considering Sweatshirt rapped each with the tenacity of a performer far beyond his 21 years. It's no wonder Kendrick Lamar recently told Twitter that Sweatshirt is his "favourite artist in the game right now".

He then proceeded to address his audience again, this time asking if they'd "heard about the Drake/Meek Mill beef", but instead of waiting for a response, he said, "It don't care, I'm going to perform songs from my album now." That album being Sweatshirt's latest (and critically acclaimed) offering, I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside.

During the second half of his set, we heard intense performances of Huey, Inside, DNA, Mantra and, of course, crowd favourite Grief. Sweatshirt avoided performing anything Odd Future-related, including tracks featuring Tyler, The Creator. He also placed a lot of focus on his lyrics that discussed loyalty and losing friends... Take from that what you will.

As he thanked his audience and walked off stage, it appeared the show had come to an end, much to the dismay of his obsessed crowd (one guy in the mosh had one of Sweatshirt's logos tattooed over his back) who began chanting "one more song" and "Sweatshirt" repeatedly.

He soon obliged and gave an encore performance of Drop... and that would have been that, had he not then decided he would stay on stage but wouldn't perform any more Earl Sweatshirt stuff; instead he jumped behind the decks and spinning remixes. This continued for about half an hours. Sweatshirt, his DJ and Garrett Stevenson from punk band Trash Talk, turned up on stage, drinking Hennessey, coordinating their dance moves and pretty much just having their own private party while those still in the venue stood danced or simply bore witness.

*No patrons were punched in the face during the show.