Swag, Swag, Punch a Bitch - an Exploration of New Moral Panic Through the Music of Odd Future

The single-shot music video for Tyler, the Creator’s “Yonkers” is a shocking tour de force that can really only be described as “gross” – at  0:50 he eats a cockroach and 6 seconds later we watch him start to vomit; at 2:00 he becomes a black-eyed demon, and by 2:30 he has successfully hung himself. As my first interaction with the now infamous rap group Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (also called Odd Future), “Yonkers” (by Tyler, the group’s de facto leader) was a surprisingly emblematic gateway to the surreal world the group has created. Over the past three months I have attempted to find out what it is that makes this world so alluring despite its blatant (ironic?) nihilism and to understand Odd Future’s position at the margin of reality.

http://auralstandards.com/tag/odd-future/

I know I'm not the only bastard in America

So I'm going to need some help

Scream with me n****s – "Inglorious"

            Walking into the concert venue for my first Odd Future show, I am handed a mask of Tyler’s face that I quickly realize is not an optional accessory, indicated by the “what is that mask doing in your hands and not on your face” stare given to me by the bouncer. Being in a room filled with kindred Tyler-faces immediately makes me feel comfortably anonymous, removing accountability in a way that palpably changes the dynamic of the show. Assuming the role of Tyler and participating in his distinct narrative, one revolving around his “race, gender, acquired abilities, family background, and other personal circumstances” (Miller), is strangely liberating. The show is mayhem, and any behavior becomes acceptable within the confines of the venue; this isn’t me anymore, this is Odd-Future-me.

            For two hours, Odd Future makes the audience feel like part of their circle. The ten members scream into microphones, and audience members compulsively rap along, their voices invisibly joining those of the performers, and frequent call-and-response (“I say ___, you say ___”) engages the audience on another level. The group very much feels like a dynamic social circle, with each member inhabiting a unique niche that is solidified outside of the show by their online presence. Almost every member operates a Twitter account that highlights their personalities –

Tyler's hypersexualized jokes

Domo Genisis's stoner 

Taco's juvenile sense of humor

FrankOcean's suaveness(?)

With constant, mundane updates on Twitter and their group Tumblr, Odd Future fans feel as if they are constantly kept in the loop about what the group is doing, and coming to their show means coming face to face with already familiar performers. They create an inviting and immersive image – a pastiche of LA skateboard punk-dom and schoolyard bullying that is bizarrely alluring.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_luoorqVnv61qb8q0zo1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1324368285&Signature=oBYNVXq2hR%2Fe1SMcma1nEJ2nvLY%3D

I'm not a rapper nor a rapist nor a racist

I fuckk bitches with no permission and tend to hate shit

And brag about the actions in a rhyming pattern matter

And proceed to sat her down when I go splatter in her chatterbox
– "Tron Cat"

            It is impossible to discuss Odd Future’s fan base without first understanding the nature of their lyrical content. Most criticism of the group focuses on the blatantly misogynistic and violent themes that pervade Odd Future’s songs. In the song “Tron Cat,” Tyler enacts one of his alter egos and delivers the oft-quoted line, “Raped a pregnant bitch and told my friends I had a threesome.” 

In “Transylvania,” Domo Genesis raps, “Don’t got a problem smacking a bitch / kidnapping, attacking, with axes and shit / 'til I grab them throats and start smacking them shits / it’s because, I’m Dracula bitch.” 






Other songs are subversive for the sake of subversion – the chorus of “Radicals” is the repeated chant, “Kill people, burn shit, fuck school.”

           Their songs are polarizing, and listener reactions vary across a wide spectrum. YouTube comment battles ensue in response to their videos, with some commenters lauding Odd Future for their genius, and others pointing to Odd Future as evidence of the death of hip-hop. Discussions of OF content are often highly racialized, with disapprovers criticized for their “whitness.” Online, fans face criticism with relentless retaliation, drawing solidarity from their collective subversion (Miller). They quell criticism by suggesting that analyzing Odd Future’s songs through an analytical or moral lens constitutes a misunderstanding of the group.

            And maybe these songs shouldn’t be looked at through a socially critical lens. When asked about their intent in writing such nihilistic lyrics, the usual responses from Odd Future imply a failure on the part of their critics. They constantly draw attention to the fact that their lyrics aren’t meant to be taken seriously and that they are either expressions of their darkest thoughts, or that they are used for the simple shock value. However, many listeners are unphased, and some try to redirect attention to what often goes unnoticed in OF’s lyrics – the substance, artistry, and wit. Regarding Tyler's alter-egos, OF fan Dan says, 

"I think one of the most indicative personas, one that really cuts to the heart of the question is his role as the psychologist. One of the things that I think he's doing, which he might not be, is exploring these aspects of the mind that are repressed and not talked about socially."

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls6zemNm1T1qb8q0zo1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1324369937&Signature=t80J7FM4AwsvHWFF1A5w2C01rk8%3D

I am the devil, fucker get on my level - "Nightmare"

            The text of Odd Future songs alone is not enough to make conclusive statements about its fanbase, but as quoted in Hills, “The processes by which fans choose to poach one thing and not another…. Involve factors both in the text and in the individual.” What is to be said about an audience that guiltlessly screams “Shut up bitch, suck my dick!”? I optimistically hope OF fans don’t charge the lyrics with meaning, but I do think there is genuine meaning in the free expression of blatantly subversive subjects.

            One of the most bizarre dynamics of Odd Future shows is the racial disparity – a group of over ten black rappers singing to an almost completely white audience. In Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang, Eithne Quinn writes, “The urban ‘underclass’ connotated moral permissiveness and criminal threat, both figured in terms of race… The strategy of dubbing poor black communities as ‘dangerous’ and ‘dependent’… helps to forge one’s own territory – defining other people in stereotypical ways consolidates self-definition.” Though this analysis is a bit dated, more appropriately applied to rap in the 80’s and not to its modern iteration where rap can often be considered a form of pop, the still-present racialized label of “moral permissiveness” finds a bizarre permutation in Odd Future’s fan base. There seems to be an appropriation of symbols of danger that have become culturally associated with blackness, but exploring these “dangerous” subjects – violence, rape, murder – in a space where they are conspicuously absent and addressed with a sort of wink makes them more acceptable for exploration by groups that have traditionally proscribed them. Just as dubbing blacks as “dangerous” consolidated rightward-oriented whites, accepting the aggressive nihilism of Odd Future’s music helps to consolidate listeners in a feeling of shared subversion (Miller).

            But again, the emphasis is exploration in the absence of actual subversive acts. In her essay “Women’s Responses to Shocking Violence,” Annette Hill describes a female viewer of gory horror films whose experiences watching on-screen violence reaffirm her attitude toward real-life violence – “Testing boundaries does not relate to real experience of violence, and her memory of acute distress at witness real violence reinforces her new understanding that responses to fictional violence are not the same as responses to real violence.” The experience of listening to Odd Future songs is comparable to watching a horror movie so absurdly bloody that it’s almost easy to watch – if it were more realistic, it might be more shocking (Come on, Tyler, you’re not really chopping your girlfriend’s legs off and then putting her eyeballs into your canteen). The lyrics never seem to be realized; nobody is actually getting killed, or beaten, or raped. 
        With so much talk of raping bitches, the bitches are almost nowhere to be found, except in the back of the hall (more about this later…). Every nihilistic line feels like it is delivered an implicit wink that suggests, “Nobody should really do what we’re talking about doing.” As Tyler says in the opening of “Radicals” –  “Random disclaimer: Hey, don’t do anything that I say in this song. Okay? It’s fucking fiction. If anything happens, don’t fucking blame me, White America.” 

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lss36gfITy1qb8q0zo1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1324370031&Signature=T%2BEi4fnmAowKkh1bTTg7hDthdxY%3D

I’m not homophobic…. F****t – Goblin

             Odd Future insults a lot of people – women, whites, blacks, gays, hipsters – in essence, every constituency of their fanbase. So how do they manage to keep these offended groups coming back to their concerts to scream lyrics that are no more than self-directed slurs?  Taking these insults in stride becomes the main form of accumulating subcultural capital in the OF scene. Just as early rap culture embedded  hardness into its image, associating it with an ability to tolerate trying urban life, Odd Future’s fanbase equates hardness with an ability to stomach defamation.

Syd tha Kyd
oddfuture.tumblr.com

            The gender disparity at the Odd Future show was as jarring as the lack of racial diversity. Without many exceptions, the girls who attended the show (I would guess about 20% of the audience) were concentrated in the back of the hall. First of all, I imagine it takes a certain amount of chutzpah as a female to show up to an OF show, when their music does very little to depict women as anything other than murder-able, rape-able bodies. Secondly, women at the show itself were under rapid-fire slander, with chants with misogynistically charged vocabulary (“Kill sluts,” “My bitch suck dick,” etc.).

            But most of the women reacted to these attacks with emphatic enthusiasm, as if their ability to tolerate offense legitimized their place in the impromptu gang that encompasses the audience and Odd Future itself at their shows. In Hill’s article, she describes a similar phenomenon –  “the fact that [the subject] watches violent films does not mean she is desensitized to violence, she has empowered herself.” The ability to withstand verbal assault becomes a right of passage into the Odd Future scene. The poster child for this female “empowerment” is Odd Future’s only female member, Syd that Kyd. She fills a distinct niche; as the DJ, she is responsible for maintaining the flow of the show. Her aesthetic is typically male, with short, cropped hair, baggy clothes, and no element of visual adornment; she is also lesbian-identifying, which further removes her from traditional modes of femininity and seems to solidify her place in the intensely masculinized scene. But what makes her so striking is how eerily stoic she is; during the show, Tyler calls on the audience to chant “Kill the stripper,” directed at Syd, who faces this affront with nothing more than a slight smile. Her access to power comes from her arguably racialized ability to take insults in stride, an ability that defends her position in the Odd Future gang and that becomes the standard disposition that should be assumed by any group that is insulted by Odd Future.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lkkyt25fiJ1qb8q0zo1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1324370221&Signature=cpMN8yBq1bBVgL6R2CVcGmXZlp4%3D

N***a had the fuckin' nerve to call me immature

Fuck you think I made Odd Future for?

To wearin' fuckin' suits and make good decisions?

Fuck that n***a, Wolf Gang – "Sandwitches"

            So at the end of this blogpost, you’re likely left with the same question I have – do we take Odd Future seriously? They supposedly don’t mean anything they say, but does their music normalize dangerous subjects, or does it provide a constructive venue for (safe?) exploration of proscribed topics? In The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau argues, “Every reading modifies its object… The reader … invents in the text something different from what [the author] intended. He detaches them from their (lost or accessory) origin. He combines their fragments and creates something unknown.” Author Henry Jenkins continues this idea – “Such intense interaction eventually leads many fans toward the creation of new texts, the writing of original stories.” It’s unrealistic to expect Odd Future to be responsible for breeding a generation of nihilistic criminals, but I do think they inspire potentially dangerous subversion.

            What ultimately makes the group so alluring is their position on the brink of reality and on the brink of morality. Matt Hills argues, “‘Cult’ status therefore seems to hinge on a certain ‘undecidability’, a space for interpretation, speculation and fan affect which cannot be closed down by final ‘proof’ or ‘fact’. Even texts which appear to offer closure or resolution can be mined by fans for endlessly deferred narrative.” Odd Future is forever deferring this narrative – half-convincing us “no bitches were raped in the making of this album.” But the last, more important question is this: what is being said about the group’s fans? I think that what makes Odd Future successful is their refreshing subversiveness. With the now-tired motifs of materiality, objectified sex, etc. becoming commonplace in much modern rap, Odd Future goes one step further, talking about murder as if it were blasé. In doing so, they are able to incite moral panic in a largely desensitized generation, appealing to the characteristic desire of youth to be radical.

With the whole world in front of me,

Odd Future teenagers, nobody can fuck with we – "Parade"

Word Count: 2225

Works Cited

Barker, Martin and Julian Petley, eds. 2001. Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate (Second Edition). New York: Routledge.

de Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, University of California Press, Berkeley 1984

Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. New York: Routledge.

Jenkins, Henry (1992) Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge.

Miller, Kiri. 2008. "Grove Street Grimm: Grand Theft Auto and Digital Folklore." Journal of American Folklore 121(481):255-285. 

Quinn, Eithne. 2005. Nuthin' But a "G" Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap. New York: Columbia University Press.