![]() Moral qualms aside, this stuff is just bad art. Far from being shocking, they're depressingly predictable: not an odd future but the ghost of hip-hop bullshit past. Worse is the implicit assumption that his self-disgust licenses him to vent his frustrations in the retrograde misogynistic fantasies of Transylvania or Boppin' Bitch. At least there he's trying to punch up instead of down. The stodgy would-be rebel anthem Radicals hardly shakes the system to its core with the news that he doesn't like (a) school, (b) religion and (c) people telling him what to do. When he lashes out, his targets are all too obvious. On the most engaging track, Her, he wrestles with conflicting responses to romantic rejection: "I could slander her name and then tell 'em I probably fucked/ I could tell them the truth that she didn't like me much." Like anyone who spends too long insisting he doesn't give a fuck, he clearly does.īut Tyler demands the listener's understanding while showing precious little to anyone else. He's "annoying and I'm ugly, most niggas wanna punch me". He watches too much porn, cries, nurses grudges, contemplates suicide. On Window he raps: "In school I was a zero, now I'm every boy's hero," but the zero stays with him and supplies his most candid material. ![]() Tyler's outlook is fundamentally adolescent: lonely, attention-seeking, snarky, defensive, belligerent, confused, self-aggrandising and self-hating. If Goblin had a smell it would be the stale, hormonal fug of a teenage boy's bedroom, whose resident, as Tyler confesses on Her, plays "Xbox in piles full of wet socks". And while Bastard had some winningly absurd jokes ("I go to Obama rallies screaming out 'McCain!'"), Goblin is claustrophobically solemn and overcast. Nor does it persuade as pure satire, unless Tyler is the most dextrous, triple-bluffing satirist of modern times. Unlike, say, NWA, whose violent nihilism could be viewed as a harsh but necessary insight into their environment, Tyler eludes a sociopolitical alibi. Goblin is undeniably, intentionally unpleasant, and any attempt to wave away the unpleasantness is bogus. But Goblin is too long and oppressive, giving the listener time to become exhausted, annoyed, disgusted or, even worse, bored by Tyler's misanthropy – which includes, though is not limited to, casual homophobia and rampant misogyny (Fader magazine tallied 204 uses of "bitch" over its 73 minutes). Though Odd Future's dense, relentless, antisocial music is hardly unprecedented, the synth-heavy production is ingeniously eerie and the rhyming uncannily dextrous. It's a shame Goblin will be many people's introduction to Odd Future, rather than superior online giveaways such as Bastard or Earl Sweatshirt's joltingly intense Earl. Like Eminem, NWA or the Sex Pistols before them, Odd Future invite one of the most compelling questions in pop: who are these people and what do they want? But music can't be fenced off, and there are many listeners outside Odd Future's youthful core following who are simultaneously enthralled and appalled. In theory, it's a critic-proof strategy: only listeners who embrace him without reservations are qualified to comment. "They don't get it, 'cos it's not made for them," Tyler snaps. The title track's gist, to quote another chippy young lyricist, is Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not: a preemptive strike at potential critics. Like his 2009 debut, Bastard, Goblin is framed as a session with his therapist, but this time – after a year or so wandering the internet's hall of mirrors – he is also addressing his presumed audience. Since they emerged in 2008, their richly offensive online releases have provoked gigabytes of debate (in a nutshell: "Is it OK to like this?"), which has reached critical mass with Tyler's first official album. Shenanigans, to put it mildly, are Odd Future's modus operandi. ![]() Fox's Boston affiliate, at least, acknowledged the phenomenon by reporting an unruly record-store signing where police were called to "quell the shenanigans". Fox News's feeble attempt to present Common's invitation to the White House as a threat to the republic because the thoughtful rapper was once rude about the police seemed irrelevant in light of the online debate simultaneously raging about Tyler, the Creator, the 20-year-old star player of cult LA collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All and the most hotly discussed new musician of 2011. L ast week was an interesting one for controversy in hip-hop.
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