Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All have EXPLODED in pop culture recently. Back when I read Sean Fenessey's excellent Pitchfork article "The Swag Generation" in the fall, I had no idea they would get this big. I wonder if Sean and the other early music bloggers thought that either?
This past Sunday My fellow DJ on WAMH (Amherst College Radio), and Spencer and I had a conversation about Tyler, The Creator's new album Goblin (which just dropped this past Tuesday) and he kept using a really great word to describe the Wolf Gang: "Subversive."
Odd Future and especially Tyler subvert all kinds of established ideas with their music and with their statements, their image and their swag. Tyler raps about raping and murdering people,crossdressing, heavy-ass drug use funny considering he is, in reality, straight edge). Tyler is homophobic and mysoginist. And he hates just about everything but the clothing brand supreme, his brothers in Odd Future and Pharrell. His lyrics make it clear that he might hate himself more than anything.
It is not just lyrics that make Tyler and his fellow Wolves subversive, though. In their live shows and their blogging and their album art the Wolf Gang uses all kinds of images that typically "upset" the mainstream. 666, Swastikas, Charles Manson Crosses. They take pictures of happy families and photoshop the people into drooling zombies. They work to come at the throat of our largely square and conservative culture.
This is "punk" to me. Odd Future is the closest thing to the Sex Pistols screaming "Anarchy In The U.K" since maybe the sex pistols screamed that. Their music is not really political or intellectual. It's angry. They want to shake up the system, not really rationally, but out of angst and frustration in a very refreshing way.
Like I said earlier, the Wolf Gang is popular. They have played at Coachella, they were on Jimmy Fallon, their touring Europe already...they exist in the mainstream space, but they have no songs that would be traditionally considered "hits." Hits now are like the Black Eyed Peas. Music that is manufactured to be popular is neutered music. Empty calories. It is the same people saying basically "party party party we made it we're the best!" over synths. Listen to your local hits station. That's every song.
I don't think Wolf Gang will ever be top 40 like Flo-Rida or whatever, but their popularity is impressive considering how they work to not be radio friendly, to not be likable at all. Perhaps Tyler's best song is "Yonkers" and in it he talks about brutally murdering "hit" rapper B.O.B and the pop singing Bruno Marz.
But, here's the rub: both Bruno Marz and Tyler the Creator are on MTV.
Goblin is one of the best Wolf Gang releases if not the best. It's a very long album made up of many 6 to 8 minute experimental beats and extremely confrontational lyrics. It is not your typical hit rapper's album. Tyler did not make Goblin to pander to anyone. It is not entertainment. It's expression.
Tyler and company never censors themselves at all. On Goblin Tyler doesn't care if we don't get his references. He doesn't care if we don't like his weirdo beats. He doesn't care if he scares or offends us or if we scream along to his chants about killing and raping girls and and burning schools.
Tyler has a song called "Radical" on Goblin and that is, like "Subversive," a great word to describe OFWGKTA. It is also the name of their powerful group mixtape.
The use of the word "Radical" is a threat to those in power. However, to those who are truly going against the grain it is empowering. It is empowering to say "I'm a radical" but it's condemning to say "You're radical..."
Again, Goblin is not an intellectual album. On the album's opening track "Goblin," Tyler even says he is nothing like super political and intellectual rapper Immortal Technique: "I don't listen to immortal tech of the nique/all this underground bullshit that's never gon' peak/ On the billboard top 20 jam of the week/ I'd rather listen to Badu and the Pusha the T/ and some Waka Flocka Flame than some real hip hop/"
Even though Goblin is not a political album in the Immortal Technique sense, I really do think it challenges power. It challenges close-mindedness whether that close-mindedness is "politically correct" attitudes or conservative attitudes or the idea of what is good music even.
Spencer told me of another DJ at WAMH who is (like me) a Hampshire student. Apparently the guy did his final project in a Hampshire class on Odd Future and played a song (I'm not sure which) for the class. Hampshire is a school focused so much on political correctness that just playing this "radical" song caused a real mess in that class apparently. People were freaked out and angered by whatever subversive Wolf Gang track this guy played for the class. I think Tyler and his crew would be proud to hear that. And this is funny, of course, because Hampshire prides itself on being a very liberal school.
Odd Future fear nothing and Goblin shows that. They feel truly free to say whatever they want and talk shit about or explicitly fantasize about murdering whoever they want. Odd Future's subversive attitude (and amazing music) gives me hope that we can wake up and be Radical again. I think that for the majority of the 2000s when I've been alive and thinking about shit, we the youngins have been seriously lacking radical voices. And those in power have been perhaps more conservative, more criminal and more square than ever.
I'll end this with a quotation from the always eccentric and always wise Lil B. As The Based God said to Tyler recently:
"All Love For The Rebels"
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