Tosten Burks only used the word “swag” once in the writing of this article.
Everyone knows the story by now: faux-rebellious suburban skate punks drop staggering amounts of staggeringly crude haunted house rap onto message boards and quickly skyrocket to the top of the Internet on the backs of indignant teens and intellectual Caucasians. It’s a trajectory of hype more meteoric than any other in the history of the blogosphere.
Everyone knows the story by now. That’s the point.
The Odd Future conversation has forever focused on how the Wolf Gang is polarizing. I’d like to talk about their permanence.
See, these kids just aren’t going away. That will be disappointing and obnoxious to the OF detractors, a population that seems to be as big and stubbornly rabid as any anti-fan movement in recent memory. The fact of the matter is though, whether the anti-OF crowd are outnumbered or not, Tyler and company have fans in all the right places. Not only are they continuing to unwaveringly do their thing, they are doing their thing everywhere, and with everyone.
There was, of course, the Jimmy Fallon moment. And then Yonkers. And then the VMA’s. This unbridled group of reckless energy that was once an underground blurb is now an award-winning collective bouncing around stage and flashing “Free Earl” imagery to an audience of 12.4 million people.
More than any of this though, what is cementing Odd Future into hip-hop’s center stage is the features.
Over the last few months, Pusha T, The Game, and no less than Jay-Z and Kanye West themselves have featured OF members prominently in their music. And after a song off Stones Throw Records’s MED’s new album was released last week featuring Hodgy Beats, you can add Madlib to that list. Think about Hodgy working with Madlib six months ago. It would be an enormous breakthrough. Now, it’s a blip.
And the thing is, every feature has been memorable.
“Trouble on My Mind” gave Pusha more attention than he’s gotten since “Runaway,” a feat that has to be credited at least in part to Tyler’s performance, which boils down OF’s gangster absurdism to a grimy but palatable median that sounds almost radio-friendly (even?) in its terror. Tyler does the same on “Martians vs. Goblins,” on top of inspiring Game to deliver the best rap diss of the year. Even with Lil Wayne being in a slump, doesn’t it say a lot that Tyler contributes more to a track than a Weezy chorus? And of course, Frank Ocean’s hooks on Watch the Throne are undebated bright spots on a heavily critiqued mess of commercial success.
Hodgy shines on Madlib’s production too, delivering a verse bursting with all the typical Odd Future swag of a farcical comic-book thug in which he boasts about splashing mud puddles and throwing rocks with trolls.
The point is, major players in the industry want to work with Odd Future, and when it happens, Odd Future is impressing. They’ve always been a bandwagon ridden by people who matter, i.e. Mos Def yelling swag into NBC cameras. Part of the appeal has always been that they seem to appeal to everyone else.
But now that’s arising in tangible, major ways. Features. It’s easy to ignore when your favorite rapper tweets about a bunch of skate rats. It’s harder to ignore those skate rats when they’re rapping on the same songs as your favorite rapper.
Oh, and all of this doesn’t even mention the fact that Mellowhype is on the Madden ‘12 soundtrack. Odd Future is in the game, and they aren’t going anywhere soon.
Download:
MP3: M.E.D. ft. Hodgy Beats-“Outta Control”
