Collective: Odd Future

[DrAwkward]

The thing that fascinates me about Odd Future isn't really the shock-value or the beats, or the lyrics (which I enjoy, but am not compelled to revisit after the initial perusal), is how these kids have taken the rein on the production end of things. I don't mean 'production' in the cheesy audio recording definition we've grown to be wary of.

I'm far more impressed at the 'roll your own' ethos that goes throughout their art. I really like that they make their own beats and videos. they do their own album art, build their own websites, mix their own records, and have an insane adeptness with social media stuff and other DIY components. they're shrewd and manipulative, and it represented a signifier of a paradigm shift for young rappers.

I would agree with this, by and large, and it's probably the reason i keep trying to find a way into their music that i'll enjoy. Granted, i've only really listened to Goblin so far, and overall i found it fairly underwhelming and not able to live up to the hype. The pitch shifted therapist who keeps breaking in to the songs is *really* stupid, and pulls me out of the experience of the album every time.

With re: to the whole "faggot" thing, i'm reminded of Boris the Sprinkler albums in the 90s and Rev. Norb's Maximumrocknroll columns. He often used the word "fag" and repeatedly disclaimed that he meant the word in the context of a schoolyard insult with no sexual orientation attached (i can see where he's coming from on that tip--when i was in grade school in the 80s the "i pledge allegiance to the flag/Michael Jackson is a fag" rhyme was really popular at my school, but i had no idea what a gay person was [hell, i didn't even know how sex worked until i was 10]; i just assumed a "fag" was a term for a weird, strange, eccentric person). All that being said, when i go back and listen to some of Norb's lyrics now, they are super clever and hold up well, but the "fag" references haven't aged well, at all. It sounds to me now like a dude who's pissed that he can't use a word he's used his whole life in a different context, trying to do some intellectual gymnastics to justify it so he doesn't have to modify his own speech. Decide for yourself whether or not that's a noble goal, i guess, and you can probably arrive at your stance on OF's use of the word, if i understand their rationale for it.

But bottom line, the music's not doing it for me yet, so whatever. Sorry that i don't understand rap, Antero.

[tallchris]

Hey, now the website with the second worst comments section on the internet has reposted Steve's post.

[flytox]

Steve's post was re-posted by The Stranger's music blog.

Kind of annoying that someone had to take Steve's post and go post it elsewhere. I know Steve probably doesn't give a shit, but it feels like there's lurkers on the board with questionable designs.

These lurkers are not half as annoying as what´s to come. German super hipster asshole magazine INTRO just published an online article about Steve´s encounter including a link to this thread. Lots of Portugal.The Man fans going to sign in now.

[deep.BTUz]

Here you go. One more.

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2 ... ni_do.html

[Mason]

"Most users ever online was 530 on Mon Aug 08, 2011 11:03 am"

[jimmy two hands]

I was wondering why there have been so many guests signed on. This means I'll have to listen to Odd Future now. Pretty late on the hype, I am. I must be getting old. Get off my lawn.

[RSMurphy]

Favorite BrooklynVegan comment: do you really think they were saying 'nigger' instead of 'nigga' ?? - big difference there. especially when retold by a white guy.

[steve]

Randall,*

I dislike the word. I don't like hearing it and I don't like writing it. It isn't my word in any respect, so it's unusual and uncomfortable for me, like another language, and I try not to use it. I only used it in this context because anything else would have been lying about it. I know how loaded it is, and how easy it makes dismissing the content, which is one reason it took me a couple of weeks to reply to being asked about it.

I said as much in the Huck Finn thread.

We need to let the generation who heard and used that word in anger hear it go fallow in polite society before they die. That's all.

I didn't always think this way, but I grew up.

*I would have addressed you as Smoke, which is an awesome nickname I hope everybody adopts for you, but I don't yet know your feelings about it.

[Antero]

I would agree with this, by and large, and it's probably the reason i keep trying to find a way into their music that i'll enjoy. Granted, i've only really listened to Goblin so far, and overall i found it fairly underwhelming and not able to live up to the hype.

You should try Rolling Papers. While I like Goblin a lot, it's intentionally hostile to the listener. Rolling Papers is mostly just Domo rapping about weed, with Tyler and Left Brain's best production.

[RSMurphy]

(a bunch of stuff that didn't need to be written)

Common Internet-miscommunication, Steve. I was referring to "Anonymous," the BrooklynVegan reader who left the nigger/nigga-comment. Anonymous' point was that you misunderstood Odd Future's pleasantries by virtue of being white; as if no one has the right to be put-off by a truncated, user-friendly, declawed version of "nigger."

No harm done.

Best,
Smoke

P.S. Hey, bloggers, check out the provocative band in my signature. They flirt with Third Reich symbolism and are fierce advocates of puffin-rape. The drummer has dope beats.

[Antero]

A number of artists including Odd Future, Waka Flocka, and particularly Lil B are doing work that changes the way people think about what it is to rap, the act of rapping, the power of DIY, the sound of a hip-hop song.

Not trying to be a dick, but can you explain to me how those acts are (a) changing the way people think about what it is to rap, (b) changing the way people think about the act of rapping, or (c) the sound of a hip-hop song? I don't hear anything in their music that demands that sort of reappraisal of the medium. Maybe it's slightly eccentric hip-hop, but it's still very much recognizable as hip-hop to these ears.

Well, Lil B is an obvious one - he's engaged in a very intentional experimental project that has been pushing the edges of rap in all directions. He made thousands of songs, ranging from carefully written and extremely traditional "conscious" rap to completely automatic speech over ambient loops, to croaking anti-skilled rants over fractured lo-fi beats where he does shit like repeat "Ellen Degeneres" over and over. He kind of took apart what the act of rapping involves and put it back together again in weird combinations. The number of different ways Lil B has fucked with the genre would be a very, very long list, and my battery is dying.

Waka Flocka completely trashed the concept of lyricism and replaced it with a howl of anger and pain. I mean, the man has songs where his verses are mixed lower than the other track of him screaming in the background. He gets on beats that would (and regularly do) dwarf most rappers and tears through them. He's a completely different model of what it means to be a good rapper - he embodies none of the traditional values of the MC, but he's undeniably powerful.

Aight, my battery is soooo dead

[RSMurphy]

Well, Lil B is an obvious one - he's engaged in a very intentional experimental project that has been pushing the edges of rap in all directions. He made thousands of songs, ranging from carefully written and extremely traditional "conscious" rap to completely automatic speech over ambient loops, to croaking anti-skilled rants over fractured lo-fi beats where he does shit like repeat "Ellen Degeneres" over and over. He kind of took apart what the act of rapping involves and put it back together again in weird combinations. The number of different ways Lil B has fucked with the genre would be a very, very long list, and my battery is dying.

Waka Flocka completely trashed the concept of lyricism and replaced it with a howl of anger and pain. I mean, the man has songs where his verses are mixed lower than the other track of him screaming in the background. He gets on beats that would (and regularly do) dwarf most rappers and tears through them. He's a completely different model of what it means to be a good rapper - he embodies none of the traditional values of the MC, but he's undeniably powerful.

Sounds like glossolalia. Diamanda Galas, Elizabeth Fraser, even Ella Fitzgerald or Scatman Crothers can be said to push the boundaries of speech and vocal delivery. Its not new, but as it's applied to hip hop I can see how it can be refreshing in that context.

[Antero]

Sounds like glossolalia. Diamanda Galas, Elizabeth Fraser, even Ella Fitzgerald or Scatman Crothers can be said to push the boundaries of speech and vocal delivery. Its not new, but as it's applied to hip hop I can see how it can be refreshing in that context.

Closest to automatic poetry, really. It's definitely not new in the grand scheme of things, but really very little is and the context is terribly significant. Doing such things in a hip-hop setting also starts to draw a distinction between the genre and the act of rapping which, it must be said, is no longer strictly the province of rap-the-genre.

Lil B is also the most vocal opponent of homophobia in rap, and has a history of aggressively fucking with the genre's machismo by bragging about being a "princess" and a "pretty bitch".

When, one day, an openly gay rapper gets mainstream prominence, they will talk about Lil B and Syd from Odd Future.

[sulfur)addict]

Man, reading through these comment sections is absolutely hilarious.

From someone mentioning P.M. Dawn (could there be a bigger foil to Odd Future?), all of the cooking shots at Steve, the very mentioning of ICP (someone clearly doesn't get it), all friggin' great.

Still patiently awaiting Mellowhype's new record, still patiently awaiting the return of Earl, still convinced Odd Future is one of the best things going around today.

[P.J. Craven]

Why does the media thrive primarily on controversy and conflict? I mean, it's an interesting read (the Odd Future bus ride), but Mr. Albini does says and does all sorts of other interesting stuff.

When Steve spoke at DePaul last year, he talked about an entire shipment of adobe bricks from New Mexico intended for use in his home studio completely reduced to useless rubble and/or dust upon arrival. There's gotta be some YouTube clip of that somewhere out there. If I'm a journalist (which I'm not), that's a fascinating, enlightening story about how a person of some note began his career. But it would seem that because it doesn't involve Albini saying something controversial, it doesn't get picked up.

Jon Stewart, as he so often does, put it best: "The bias of the mainstream media is towards sensationalism, conflict, and laziness." When this place gets picked up in the media (from blogs on up the food chain), whether it's Steve or someone else, it's almost always a conflict story, whether it's manufactured or it isn't.

-Deacon from Animal Collective's Mali trip Kickstarter fundraiser vs. us
-Heather vs. Jessica Hopper
-James Burns vs. Weezer
-Steve vs. Sonic Youth
-Steve vs. Odd Future

...and so forth. Other kinds of "stories" from here are occasionally published as news or go viral, but if it involves a strong difference of opinion between disparate media/Internet entities, it automatically seems to generate attention. It's no wonder the Odd Future snowball keeps rolling--they keep making people angry.

I think I must be whining about the sun rising in the east, but I find this lazy journalistic habit tiresome.

[Ptommydski]

Really, people are taking offence at the language? He's virtually quoting. I don't understand.

With hindsight, it is a very good thing that the second Big Black EP didn't run with its working title.

[MrMattDiehl]

Steve, I do vaguely remember you answering the phone at the Northwestern college radio station with "Fuck you!" and hanging up when you were around the age of the Odd Future gents... That memory made me laugh in light of this discussion.

[Trey]

Steve, I do vaguely remember you answering the phone at the Northwestern college radio station with "Fuck you!" and hanging up when you were around the age of the Odd Future gents... That memory made me laugh in light of this discussion.

Yeah, sounds almost exactly like them on that shuttle bus.

[Ptommydski]

Steve, I do vaguely remember you answering the phone at the Northwestern college radio station with "Fuck you!" and hanging up when you were around the age of the Odd Future gents... That memory made me laugh in light of this discussion.

The only part I disagreed with regarding Steve's post was that this one incident means they are always assholes. I am sure I was occasionally disruptive or rude in public as a kid but I don't think those instances necessarily represent me forever. This story you tell here makes me laugh but sure, I guess it is rude on paper.

Even as a kid the tour diary of the last Big Black diary made me wince about four or five times a paragraph but I understood that this was a young man who was in a nihilistic punk rock band writing about a series of stressful and emotional scenarios. It's an amusing and visceral piece of creative writing, even though I fully believe that a lot of the people mentioned might have come away with the notion that Big Black were assholes.

All the anecdote about the shuttle ride tells me is that the Odd Future kids were assholes in public once. Maybe this just means that they are occasionally assholes, like the majority of human beings.

[P.J. Craven]

Maybe this just means that they are occasionally assholes, like the majority of human beings.

They're also children. Like, 20 years old and under for the most part, right? The oldest is like, what, 23?

I have no opinion on Odd Future's music. I saw them live, and it was an interesting circus of action/reaction, call and response. But there's only a few hip-hop groups I listen to, and most of them are superold now.