Just when you thought that the demands of the market meant that there was no place for real-life mavericks in music anymore, we got Odd Future. The nerdiest, most foul-mouthed kids on the block, they’re not exactly clean-cut commercial prospects. Just when you thought that hip-hop couldn’t get over the controversial peaks of its own past—the guns, the b**ches, the bling, The Dreaded’ N’ Word—we got Odd Future. They rasp and giggle through ultraviolent verses full of misogynistic rape fantasies and mega bigoted homophobia.
What are our stuffiest or most earnest cultural critics gonna make of this madness? Just when you thought that the only people who could really get away with that sort of thing were Joycean emcee Lil’ Wayne, thinking man’s chauvinist The-Dream, or loveably self-loathing Kanye, we got Odd Future. Their humour is more demented than that of Dr Octagon or Gravediggaz. The beats and bleeps of their tracks are weirder than those of the Antipop Consortium. Their world is one of pure nihilism and fragmented nightmares, and head honcho Tyler, the Creator’s Goblin documents that ethos best.