Tyler, the Creator: "Yonkers"

Odd Future’s aesthetic obsession with upside down crosses and scuzzily altered photos is pure detritus from the mind of Harmony Korine—another rebellious, cute teenager who, over fifteen years ago now, captured alternative America’s imagination on late night television. Pre-WWW, it took a chance meeting with Larry Clark and the patronage of Gus Van Sant for Korine’s airtight Kids script to get inspired, written, and made—the Letterman hijinks just a viral punctuation to a career already hard to ignore. Tyler, the Creator and the rest of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All represent the upending of that trajectory: first comes the aesthetic, then the viral buzz, then the support of established artists like Mos Def and the Roots leading to a Fallon gig. As far as product goes? We have a passel of interchangeable mixtapes. Without the live band and performance, the minimal organ dirge of “Sandwiches” is stiffer and more repetitive, and any supposed provocation loses the irrepressible youth of Tyler and Hodgy physically skipping around.

“Bedrock / Harder than a motherfucking Flintstone,” says Tyler over this, his first single for Goblin. The fact that he can make a flat Young Money metaphor even flatter brings up his most critical problem: for someone whose M.O. is having fresh invective to spit, he doesn’t really have anything new to say. The best line here has to do with stabbing Bruno Mars in the esophagus, a refreshing sort of sentiment reminiscent of Slim Shady’s blunt, relatable fury. Other lines, though, like “Here’s the number to my therapist / Tell him all your problems / He’s fucking awesome with listening” merely serve to enrich the context of those who fetishize OFWGKTA’s feral youth image. At least Lil B, Tyler’s chief competition in the Californian Wolf-Themed Teenage Rap Posse sweepstakes, fully inhabits his lack of subject matter, for better or worse; as long as you really believe that you are Miley Cyrus or Bill Clinton by shouting it over a drum preset, keep on doing it by all means. You may be just a slightly less complex Gucci, who in turn is a slightly less complex Weezy, but at least you’re self-actualized (I mean, based) in kind of a mind-blowing way.

Tyler, and by extension Odd Future, just seem anti-climactic. Fresh-faced menace needs a little bite, like Wu-Tang’s torture skits or Wayne’s catchphrases (”she change her name to ‘My Bitch‘”). The music acts as a mostly blank canvas, one of those repeating noise numbers accented by synth and piano, the kind of thing that’s great for bringing attention to somebody complicated like Pusha T, but which sheds a little too much light on weak rhymes. The hypeman pitchshifted down in the background would be a neat touch for something authentically doom-y, but lines like “I’m stabbin’ any bloggin’ faggot hipster with a Pitchfork” are more sad than scary, abusing his insecure patrons because that’s exactly what they want from him.

Mostly, youthful provocation done right is one of the most incisive and thrilling things to discover in a new artistic voice. Harmony Korine’s first movies still raise interesting questions about class, race, sex, and the avant garde. Even without that kind of complexity, it’s just cool when there’s a young group making their own beats and organizing a governing aesthetic, playing with their image and not giving a fuck about what’s popular. But you could say the exact same thing about the Insane Clown Posse, and as empowering as they are to rural white kids, that doesn’t mean I’d take any pride in having scouted them out before they attracted Juggalos. Especially for a group like Odd Future, it seems like the wisest course is to watch from afar instead of spending precious time trying to parse why relating a three-way to a triceratops is clever.