Thats Not Rock and Roll: Calling Bullsh** On: Odd Future

Every once in awhile, something starts trending, like a storm cloud on the horizon, and I think to myself "please don't come here and ruin this beautiful day at the golf course". Well, one of those trends is upon us here in the Indie Kingdom of Suburbia, in the form of a bunch of middle class black kids from LA called Odd Future. You might've seen them on Jim Fallon recently.

They're wild, they're miscreants, they're reprobates, they're getting tons of press. In the Galaxie of Trends, they're in the constellation Lil B. In the opinion of this blogger, their antics are transparent and tiresome. They're obviously just semi-pampered teens with too much time on their hands to come up with 'shocking' memes. They have a (frequently updated) tumblr.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, if you're a middle class black person from a Huxtable-wave family - do not rap. Do not try and have a hip-hop career. Try to win a Nobel prize, which none of your people have won yet (besides the Peace prize). Become a billionaire so Oprah doesn't get too lonely as the only black person in Palm Springs. Make your people proud. Stop trying to shock honky ass white people into taking pictures of you on their smartphones.

Why do I not like Odd Future? Well, it's basically because they take the whole architecture of 'indie culture', which rap is normally exempt from, and transfer it squarely to rap. They have a labyrinthine crew structure (even containing 'crews within crews' - a gimmick they stole from Junior M.A.F.I.A. probably, but white journalists don't usually catch that), use lots of 'imagery' a la Wu-Tang or Three 6 Mafia [note: I'm not comparing Odd Future to any of these groups musically/quality-wise. They're actually more akin to Matsiyahu but that's another story.], and create lots of 'hype' for the media to process and disseminate. And what keeps media-people busy, makes media-people happy. Dig?

Here's a video that a serious music critic guy compares to 'Nuthin But a G Thang' and calls it "history in the making"

Really? Kinda felt like I just listened to that shitty group Atmospheres or whoever they were hyping 10 years ago, accompanied by a straight-to-youtube music video made by high school kids. I think Snoop was like, the same age as these kids when 'G Thang' dropped... whose team would you rather be on?

Okay, so some of Odd Future is promising. I think this guy 'Mellowhype' (or is it 2 guys?) might be the zany/creative one in the group [via ODB]. Some compelling production on this one...

[This will be the last racially-motivated paragraph I write on here for a while, guys. promise.] Wonder what this Tyler bro thinks about 90% of his fans being white?

is this the Insane Clown Posse for ppl with 4 year degrees? Or is it just a rehash of Insane Poetry with skateboards, writ large?

Definitely a good sales formula (or is it? think about all those broadband connections, wi-fi broadband connections...), good formula for press, seeing as mainstream journalists HATE writing about 'bling' as some sort of artistic motive/muse. C'mon, white ppl treat bling as a foregone conclusion... college --> bling --> kids --> inheritance --> college --> bling --> governmental influence --> mega bling... nothing out of the ordinary there. No, what white ppl want is what they can't have - talk about fucking your girlfriends corpse after you murdered her, eating your grandparents eyeballs, or similar free-associative nonsense [via Beat Poets] the collective spits out. Really feel like this is manufactured, Lil B formula copy/paste, endorsed by the Jimmy of Fallons and other liberal pressure groups nationwide. That's why I'm taking a stand as the voice of TNRR and calling bullshit on their 2578 mp3s spread across 523 mixtapes.

"Odd Future can eat a big fat dick. Don't add us to your tumblr blog roll." - real OGs

Normally not a promoter of real violence in the hip hop world, but fuck, it's been 15 since the Biggie/Tubac debacle, let's call up Jadakiss, 50 Cent, and a handful of other 'real niggas' to pack up the tools "with the infrared beams" and do a 187 on the entirety of Odd Future. The block is about to get real hot. I'll drive.