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Odd Future: Future Intense

Odd Future

Speculating what Odd Future will become is as difficult—and fun—as defining what they are. By Justin Hampton

The fuse is lit. You don’t know when the next explosion is going off, but you know it’s coming. Besides, being taken by surprise is half the fun. Maybe they’ll start a fight with Chris Brown over Twitter. Or maybe one of them will injure his foot stage-diving into a crowd at SXSW or at a show, while a horde of fans chant “Golf! Wang! Golf! Wang!” or slogans to that effect, unconsciously hoping he’ll get up and injure himself even more seriously. Hell, maybe even the put-upon, insanely-gifted-yet-bitter leader may eventually crack under the pressure and self-destruct, with the last detonation leading to the group itself. That’s always fun.

Of course, it’s supposed to be a new day. Goodbye, evil major labels. Hello, bloggers, social media and an ultra-empowered music audience. This is the bowl the Los Angeles-based hip-hop collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All have dropped into, skateboards and all, and it’s amazing who’s watching. Pharrell, The New Yorker, Dr. Dre—practically everyone who’s wondering about the fate of the music industry wonders whether these kids will pull off the ultimate trick move that gets everyone making money again. Just ask Billboard, who called these guys the future of the music industry. It’s definitely not the time for a faceplant.

I’m talking to them early on, however, when it’s all fun and games, before it becomes a job. And just like everyone else, I’ve got an agenda when I’m talking to them. It’s not the one that they think, however.

So, I drive into downtown L.A. I run into Hodgy Beats outside the parking lot, practicing a flip on his skateboard. “The rest are coming, but I always end up early.”

“Cool. Well, let me show you where this place is.”

The loft space is a 1,500-square-foot area with brick walls, hardwood floors, an oak-paneled bar and DJ booth that doubles as a photo studio and a party space. The three-person swing in the middle of the space adds a festive touch. You pass through a fully functioning party supply business to get there. We break up the buds on the bar and I roll up joints and makeshift blunts (no Swishers; I wasn’t that down at this point in time), you know, for a little variety.

I pull out a die I got from a pocket trade with a pot trimmer last summer at the Rainbow Gathering. It’s six-sided, with the numbers given in sign language. I tell him that there are any number of communities in existence everywhere in the world where outcasts are developing their own ideas for self-reliance—tactics that will be necessary as the decades pass and the privations that climate change, overpopulation and pollution wreak upon our civilization become undeniable. I suggest he check out the Ohio-based skater estate Skatopia, which I heard about on the road, and the closest cultural analog to an intentional community I can think of for someone in Hodgy’s position. He seems interested. I smile inside. I like this kid.

As we talk, Hodgy’s phone rings. Everyone else has arrived. I go downstairs to find the OF entourage. I’m only expecting Domo Genesis, the group’s resident stoner, and Left Brain, the laid-back, easygoing yin to OFWGKTA figurehead Tyler, the Creator’s conflicted Yang. But here comes Tyler, walking up the stairs… and into another loft space where construction is taking place.

I see him making this mistake and I’m yelling, “Tyler! It’s upstairs! Let me show you,” peeking through the doorway he walked through, but he keeps walking. He then, suddenly, pushes himself against the wall, like he’s hiding. He’s being playful. So, I’m gonna hide, too.

I push myself against the wall and a sharp stab of pain shoots up my body from my back. I have backed into a bolt sticking out of the wall, because bolts sticking out of walls are so industrial and stylish, you know. I will be feeling this shit for well over a month afterwards.

Ever since then, I have associated Tyler with this crazy injury. It’s not in any way coming from some innate maliciousness on his part; unlike others I’ve met in my life. It’s just what surrounds him.

The group seems taken by the space, and after a few tokes, the documented analgesic effects (thank you, Prop 215) settle in enough for me to wonder aloud about the band’s career without much physical distraction. Tyler’s only going to jump in here every so often, as he’s not technically even part of the interview. He just showed up to make sure everything went well, and occasionally play some music on the piano. Definitely a hands-on sort of guy, this fella.

So, Hodgy, when did you guys get serious about the rap game?

“I always took it seriously. Like, when everybody took shit seriously as a group, it was about ’08. We just needed to find a spot where we could record shit.”

Most fans know that spot as their engineer/DJ Syd’s recording space. Since finding this space, the crew has amassed a back catalogue of astonishing diversity. Tyler’s moody, depression-laced melodies and snide, fuzz-laden grooves have stood out most strongly with listeners, but Left Brain has shown extraordinary growth with recent output from Mellowhype, his collaboration with Hodgy Beats. The duo’s recently re-released BlackenedWhite contains some of these tracks, including the menacing “64,” one integer up from Tyler, the Creator’s “Untitled 63” for no discernible reason at all, but not “Chordaroy” because it’s one of the fabled Earl Sweatshirt tracks.

Yes, THAT Earl Sweatshirt, the rap prodigy who recorded one LP, starred in one unforgettably eerie video, and dropped some clever verses before his mother whisked him away into some unseen limbo at some point last year. The one everybody considers to be OF’s finest MC. It’s at this point where the OFWGKTA story becomes horridly ghoulish for me. No, I didn’t ask about him, and no, I have no interest in bringing you that “exclusive” interview, because unlike The New Yorker, I put sock puppets on my hands, not in my articles. People jumped up and down over Yung Berg when he started, and nowadays stealing his chain is a hip-hop rite of passage. So, maybe Earl’s better off in the Samoan boarding school.

OF’s manager, a 40-year-old former Interscope repper named Christian Clancy, recommends on his website a book called Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges. In it, Hedges interprets American pop culture as a hallucinatory reflection of America’s rapacious, self-destructive tendencies and warped moral values. The only way out for OF is to control the narrative, make sure it isn’t labeled horrorcore, somehow diluted and therefore neutralized. “People wanna label something so quickly, so it’s not as new and not as confusing to them,” says Hodgy. “But they can’t do that to us ’cause they don’t know what label to give us, ’cause we’re always different. We keep coming [up] with different things every time. Being misunderstood is good at times.”

“It would be a problem if we all drew the same crowd,” offers Domo. “We don’t draw the same crowd. Like, I can draw in smokers and, like, the urban crowd. They pull in the horrorcore and the hipsters. It’s just a diverse crowd. It’s on purpose.”

They play around a lot, these guys. At points, I’ll ask questions, and Tyler will whisper a response into Domo’s ear, who will parrot it back to me. (Q: “What is Golf Wang?” A: (whisper) “Is a gang” (more whispers) “They attack old people” (whisper again) “They’re wild desk hunters.”) They talk of a TV show that will put the rest of their 60-person crew to work. I remark on Tyler’s fascinating VCR video on YouTube when Tyler barks out, “That’s not my video!”, just to see how far along he can string me (embarrassingly far). They stage a show-ending “booty contest” between their female fans at the end of the Pomona show I caught that reminded me of Gathering of the Juggalos in its most uncomfortably sexist moments. And boy, that swing in the middle of the room. Tyler sure loved that swing.

I often wonder what OFWGKTA’s gonna do when they grow up. Personally, I hope they can encourage their fan base to become a full-on tribe with its own customs, traditions and social vision. Tyler touches on this in “Radicals”: “We came together ’cause we ain’t had nobody else. Do you? You just might be one of us. Are you?” Hopefully, they do harness this energy, before the audience either destroys them (hello, Michael Jackson) or forgets them.

They’re in no place to hear this yet. It’s still playtime for them. And my back is still aching. Even the beef is still playful. I ask them just before they leave about their contempt for rap bloggers 2DopeBoyz and LA radio jock Steve Harvey, who often makes tearful entreaties about the fate of young black men. Domo parses Tyler’s whispers: “They are desks, and we are the ultimate desk hunters.”