I had to write about Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All at some point. Over the last year, critics and bloggers have written hundreds of articles, think pieces and columns about the already infamous Los Angeles rap ""family"" led by Hodgy Beats, Frank Ocean and Tyler the Creator. Admittedly, the glut appeared about six months ago, when the crew finally broke into the mainstream in a very large and boisterous way.
By now, many online ‘pop culture'-stalking junkies, having moved on to the greener pastures, may consider the crew old news. Unfortunately, I always tend to bloom a little later than my peers. Though I had heard the name Odd Future kicked around online in the months before its big breakthrough, I had read the reports of the gleefully irreverent bunch of rapping kids passively, intently filing away the information without really ever expecting to need to use it again.
I mean, these were a bunch of snot-nosed teenage felons-in-waiting even younger than me. Worse, Tyler and the mind-numbingly talented lyricist Earl Sweatshirt seemed to really, really enjoy sketching out feverish rape fantasies on their respective free online albums. Weirdly, the fixation on rape seemed to be more than a half-accidental running gag concocted after the fact by a bunch of hopped-up, whip-smart high school dickheads.
Instead, the group chose to incorporate its morbid fascination with sexual violence into the complex semi-mythic iconography of the group, which also involves a penchant for inverted crosses, pictures of kittens with their eyes erased and dozens of surrealistic anti-social slogans, my favorites being ""F*** Steve Harvey!"" and ""Swag, Swag, Swag.""
On the track ""Pidgeons,"" Earl Sweatshirt contributes another faux-revolutionary slogan, which goes, ""F*** rules, skate life, rape, write, repeat twice."" Of course, one word excepted, a former mall-punk, liberal arts major like me could hardly imagine a more appealing life philosophy. Then again, that word has been from the onset something of a powder keg for Odd Future, attracting a lot of attention and damaging its reputation.
But on the other hand, how much has their lack of taste really hurt these kids? Sure, when I first read about Odd Future, I had been immediately repelled by its reputation for cruel misogyny and its tendency to carelessly toss-out hard f-bombs (and I mean the six-letter word, because honestly who cares anymore about the other kind?).
I thought to myself, how the hell could anything like that actually catch on with any more than a handful of hateful, weirdo slouches hiding behind their computer monitors? And, perhaps more importantly, why the hell would I ever want to listen to a group with such a clearly distasteful fixation on sexual violence? But then the video for Tyler the Creator's ""Yonkers"" dropped, and everything changed.
I couldn't ignore Tyler any longer, so I watched the video, and there was this aggressive black kid, clearly a former high school nerd, throwing out references to Rugrats, goofing on demonic possession and for some inscrutable reason shouting out ""pregnant gold retrievers.""
Something inside me perked up. It was the same angry, cowardly rebellious impulse that compelled me to publish my underground jokey anarchist ‘zine The Aussie Avenger in high school, the same impulse that compelled me to buy Hank Williams' Greatest Hits and Big Black's Songs About F***ing on the same record store CD run my freshman year. That impulse was going crazy when it first heard ""Yonkers.""
I mean, sure, the ""Yonkers"" video flirts with a little satanic imagery and a death threat directed towards pretty boy Hawaiian pop singer Bruno Mars, but for a kid just then getting into some of the more hipster-friendly corners of black metal (Burzum, 4eva!), that was really more of a draw than a turn-off. The worse excesses of Tyler's work were notably absent, thus making ""Yonkers"" the perfect gateway into Odd Future's world.
Before you could say ""swag,"" I was knee-deep in the crazy fun-house mirror Odd Future cosmology, reveling in their lunatic-on-the-lam willingness to give the finger to anyone and everyone, including those who didn't deserve it. Somehow, despite my well-cultivated self-image as a progressive liberal softie, I loved it, and I still love it. So where the hell do I get off getting a kick out of these immature, deliberately button-pushing rants? Why am I in love with what I know I should hate?
Do you think Odd Future is totally clean for the public consumption? Is Alex being way too hard on Tyler and the group? Tell him what you think at seraphin@wisc.edu.
