If you’ve never heard the phrase Odd Future, you probably don’t spend a lot of time reading about music on the internet. Which in this case is lucky, since the good- or badness of this group of teenagers from LA has been debated, discussed, and reblogged ad infinitum over the past few months, without necessarily including any real consideration of their music. Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All is a rap music and art collective, composed mainly of teenagers, with the twin goals of making art and making you talk about them. That second part has surely been achieved faster than even Tyler the Creator, the group’s leader, could have hoped. Luckily for us consumers, the music is almost as good as the controversy, and should last a lot longer.

A few of the members of Odd Future

Over the last year and a half, Odd Future has put out about a dozen mixtapes, all available for free on their website. [Beware: the content behind these links might be offensive, but it’s not meant to be taken too seriously.] Incredibly, almost every track has been produced by Tyler, an impressive show of prolificacy from an artist who can’t yet buy alcohol legally. Several of the wolf gang-ers were still in high school while the majority of their corpus was recorded, and the group’s online promotion is even more aggressive than the music itself. Which is plenty aggressive. Beyond making good, original music at such a young age and marketing it well, the key to Odd Future’s appeal is their angry, silly, violent, playful, and above all, provocative ethos. Members of Odd Future love skateboarding, fire, and upsetting you, and not necessarily in that order. They want to make you uncomfortable, and they want to enjoy themselves while doing it.  In other words, their effect is basically that of a classroom full of class clowns. Or full of teenage Eminems.

The Odd Future media blitz was (of course) not accomplished solely through posting tons of good free music (which they did). In a week of brilliantly targeted internet manipulation and branding, Tyler released his first music video, “Yonkers”–a real showstopper, and maybe the best video of the year–hours after making an appearance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, the first TV spot for a group that had yet to tour the east coast. Tyler’s energetic performance with fellow wolf Hodgy Beats was everything that late night TV usually is not: electric, exciting, and bursting with wild energy. A few days later, the internet was abuzz.

All of which is introductory to what I really wanted to talk about, the hundred or so songs that Odd Future’s put out so far. To this point there are eleven mixtapes, three albums, and dozens of youtube videos that constitute the body of Odd Future’s work. Odd Future Tape and Radical feature all of the (rapper) members of the group, and are a good place for the uninitiated to get acquainted with the whole gang (Radical is better). The biggest OF release so far is Goblin, Tyler’s first solo album and the first real material OF album. It’s strange, long, self-referential, kind of spooky, and very personal–to the point that it’s the rare album that can be described as confessional shock rap. I’d also recommend Nostalgia, Ultra, which is somewhat of an anomaly in the OF catalog. It’s the debut of Frank Ocean, the only R&B singer in the group, and its appeal is definitely not tied to the balls-out OF aesthetic: it’s just an album of buttery smooth love songs that both your mother and your hottest friend might like.

Earl Sweatshirt, age 16

My favorite wolves are Tyler, Hodgy, and above all, the mysterious Earl Sweatshirt. Earl is the youngest member of the group, and after recording a phenomenal mixtape and a handful of other songs in 2010, he disappeared. Tyler began a FREE EARL campaign, while refusing to answer any questions about his bandmate’s whereabouts. As his music blew up on the internet, Earl was MIA. By far the best lyricist in the group, Earl ranks as either one of the most exciting new voices in hip-hop or the greatest sixteen-year-old rapper ever, depending on who you ask. None of which will matter much unless he decides to make some more music. A couple of months ago, Kelefa Sanneh of the New Yorker found Earl, improbably, at a boarding school in Samoa. Through emails with the writer, the young rapper urged OF fans to leave his mom alone. Tyler has challenged the accuracy of the New Yorker story, of course.

I love Earl, and a lot of the OF catalog is really good stuff. Odd Future’s music is very raw, roughly equal parts clever and stupid, and pretty inconsistent, but most of all it is new and exciting, like a child is new and exciting. Through all of the background stories and internet hype and overheated controversy, it’s very easy to lose sight of the only good reason that anyone should care about Odd Future, which is for their music. But that’s clearly how Tyler wants you to come to the music, and the important thing is that you enjoy listening. Just don’t think about it too hard. Click through and check it out for yourself!

—Aaron Brown

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music is my boyfriend, music is my girlfriend

In the uplifting whirlwind of my past week (I signed a lease!  I locked down another job!  My parents came to persuade me to go home to North Carolina, and they failed!), I’ve suddenly found myself in another slump, and one that I would’ve expected after I moved to New York, not before: two days ago, someone stole my phone and iPod from my makeshift bedside table while I was walking my friend out to his car.  I’m a txting junkie, so the loss of the phone was, of course, a blow, but what hit me more was the iPod theft.  I love music.  All my friends love music.  We snobbishly listen to our music on big DJ headphones and tweet Starfucker lyrics with #STRFCKR.  At least once a summer I listen to Abbey Road on vinyl with them.  Yeah, I’m one of those people.  I wear v-necks and neon and sunglasses indoors—especially at night.

I Skyped my parents (praise to the Internet for existing), and they reactivated my old phone with the T9 keypad and sticky battery pack and Fedexed it to me (it arrives this morning.  I’m anxiously awaiting the email from my campus mailing center).  So the phone situation is almost fixed.  Now for the iPod.  What to do in this age of music, when losing your mp3 player sentences you to dull, loud train rides and awkward eavesdropping on the subway?  Not to mention, that’s at least 24 gigs of essential music that I’ve painstakingly ripped and downloaded that I’ll have to sync to another iPod… when I can afford one that can store the vast amounts of 320 kbps files that I’ve organized on my external HD.

But enough obnoxious audiophile talk—or maybe not.  The last time my iPod went on the fritz, I was in high school, and I put everything on CDs and wandered around with an old school DiscMan, switching out CD for CD at every opportunity.  It was kind of a drag.  CDs take up space, the DiskMan takes up space, no matter how many mixes I made I’d always want to listen to a song on a different CD next, I couldn’t see the album art, etc.  This time, I’m far from my backup DiskMan and giant case of CDs (both bought and burned).  I have to resort to opening my laptop just to have something playing while I read, clean or pack.  And I’m beginning to notice, perhaps with my snobbily developed ear, that some of my favorite songs are showing signs of wear.  I hadn’t ripped them in lossless FLAC form, or I’d opted for the smaller 128 kbps file size, and now I could tell: there were gaps in the music, in some of the instrumental layers, that flickered or shorted out completely as the song played on.  On other songs, the sound modulated from left to right, but never in true stereo.  I know, I know.  The horror, the imperfect quality of my music!  And how could I fix this, if I didn’t have the original CDs I’d ripped them all from!?  (I could replace them quickly, but I have a personal squick about buying music from iTunes.  It has everything to do with the DRM and overall file quality and nothing to do with the pirate-revulsion at paying for music.  Let’s not get into the debate on piracy, I don’t have enough words.)

And what was worse: how am I going to listen to these soiled tracks on my daily commute—by leaving my laptop open while I read some Bret Easton Ellis?  Don’t be absurd.  That takes up way too much space.  Only grownups open their laptops on the train, and that’s because they have spreadsheets to look at and Powerpoints to polish.  I’m just a student, a youth who doesn’t know how to go anywhere without something in my ears.  If only I had my Walkman and some sweet, CD-quality music piping in through my Klipsch headphones.

I’m not delusional about what this post is roundaboutly advocating.  The fight for physical music isn’t really much of a fight at all, and hasn’t been for a long time, with record stores inexorably losing ground to other dealers like Amazon, which offers non-DRM tracks and almost CD-level quality, and to the entire torrent culture, which can get you or anyone else with an internet connection the FLAC and portable-friendly 320 kbps (or even 192 kbps) versions of nearly any album for free in five minutes.  And admittedly, portable music itself pales when you listen to the same track on a more powerful machine like a laptop, desktop, or amp.  Honestly, vinyl wins the audiophile debate on every front.

But I’d still like to make the case for the humble CD, the technological link between big, fragile, warpable vinyl records and tiny pocket-sized, low-quality mp3 players.  A CD is solid.  It’s material, it takes up some space.  If you’ve bought it new from Best Buy or used from a record store like P-rex (near where I live right now), it doesn’t matter—it’s going to sound just as good in your CD player.  All the layers will be balanced, the bass will have the perfect, intended depth, and the highs will be crisp and clear.  And there’s so much art that goes into an album package: the cover art, the liner notes, the top of the CD itself.  There’s still something to be said for artists who release albums and not just a list of singles.  There’s still something to be said for the feeling of holding a CD and knowing that you own whatever tracks are on it.  If your computer crashes or your external HD reformats itself, you’re okay.  You have the original CD version, which is nicer to listen to anyway.  Plus, no one’s going to steal a five-year-old DiskMan and a six-pound CD case.

If you’re still the type to buy CDs or at least download tracks of CD quality (burn them onto actual CDs!  Burn them now!), then luckily for you and me there are still many record stores around the city that cater to our obsessive audiophilic needs.  While I’m still in New Jersey, I have P-Rex, which deals in many, many used CDs and records as well as blank CDs with enough storage for larger high-quality downloads.  In the city, though, I’ll probably head to Village Music World.  They’re not paying me to say that, they just have a $2 student discount off any CD, and I’m student-poor.  I already have to spend money on another DiskMan.

x
Robin

I tweet while I’m at work. I have yet to master hashtags.
My personal blog: a collection of music and other pop culture things I like.

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