Streaming Consciously: TYLER, THE CREATOR...Thru the FUTURE and the Past, ODD-ly
Flowers and Potholes,
Pots and Pans and…
Just Clap Ya Hands.
Tyler the Creator’s new album is Flower Boy.
Tyler the Creator’s album is alternatively titled SCUM FUCK FLOWER BOY.
Because you see…Tyler the Creator is really ‘bout that Shock’n Yes Yes Y’all life.
Always has been.
Which takes me back to the first time I met him.
Wait, okay, I haven’t literally met this millennial mastermind behind the collective known as Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All.
But it feels like I did, as a Los Angeles resident familiar with the Hawthorne/Ladera Heights/Baldwin Hills/View Park region that birthed most of them (shout out to the Taylor Fam), as well as a student of its burgeoning Tumblr/streetwear/hip-hop/skate culture surrounding them back then.
These were suburban L.A. kids, trying to “find some time, find some time to do something”, because “boredom has a new best friend”.
It feels insufficient, mere months since leaving Los Angeles, after living there for the prior thirteen years, to tell you that I dig this new Tyler the Creator album.
In order to give yoūse a true outlook on what Tyler created, I need to reacquaint, or introduce, #WudderWorld thru Odd Future's past.
But to get there, we may have to dip back even further, before these nineties babies in OF formed a wink in their father's eyes.
You see, once upon a time, in a place called the eighties, most people thought that rap music would never last.
I’m blessed to say that’s when We/Me first discovered it.
There’s no better time to become aware of something, than before the powers that be determine it has validity.
The first two rap songs that changed my life were “The Show” by Doug E Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew and “Jam On It” by Nucleus.
Both were an entry point into another universe which eight-year-old me had yet to access until hearing those records.
Those of us growing up in the suburbs of Philly and New York, could not yet understand that we were standing within the floodgates of a cultural tidal wave, which would go on to quite literally change the world, and give us the dominant lexicon for future generations.
But in '84/85 as a curious kid wit virgin ears?
A powerful signal came thru loud and clear.
This stuff belonged to some young people from the places you'd yet to go, while it befuddled any olde standards set by things that came before.
Over the next two decades, as a healthy student of rap music, it not only became a part of my identity, but a signifier for pop-culture as a whole, until by the turn of the millennium, hip-hop had overtaken the rock & roll template framing earlier generations' existence.
After that mid-80's discovery, born out of late 70's South Bronx gestation, at least two “Golden Era” periods for the form would follow.
Back in the day, the purpose of this exercise was not about considering tomorrow.
That fact is difficultly explained to those born after the year rap broke.
One no amount of well-placed words recapture.
Odd Future, with its founder Tyler the Creator, came long after.
In between, despite hip-hop's ongoing musical and cultural proliferation, there were some less-than-inspiring chapters.
The genre's most underwhelming era so far, spanned virtually the entire decade of the 2000’s. Specifically and especially, from 2002 thru 2009.
Sure, like any era in rap to date, there were still definitely highlights.
But by the end of the decade, something didn’t feel right...leading me, as a contributor to the social-media-before-it-even-existed environment that was "The Lesson" music discussion board, to write this archived manifesto on #ThatSite about its plight...
Bombastic
Charter member
Wed Jul-01-09 09:07 AM
"Rap Has Gotten So Flabby & Sick Someone Needs To Knock Its Ass Out"
Something needs to come along and reduce this shit back to its basest elements.
No matter how many bodies these cats catch, or coke they sell on record, this music has long since lost its ability to shock or scare even lily white 55-year-old investment bankers (half of whom probably have a TI joint on their iPod workout playlist).
At this point we need something to come along that threatens established guardians of the genre. Not a new-jack to come up and challenge Jay-Z to a battle. Some new jacks whose very existence makes folks, old and young, fully realize how irrelevant these Rap Dinosaurs have become.
It needs to be something extreme enough that it brings the 'AND THEY CLAIM THAT IT'S MUSIC!'(c)PE crowd out of the woodwork.
Something that potentially embarrasses the fence-straddling-old-heads, still-tryin-to-be-down, into either getting on the bandwagon for real, or hopping off for good. Material uncomfortable enough to confuse some of today's youth who aren't even old enough to remember the Newsweek cover story of 1989 or the FBI Letter to NWA, when this music was actually 'threatening' for reasons beyond their favorite MC's police-blotter appearances.
Something that simplifies shit back to its rawest form like "Sucker MCs" in '83, 'Criminal Minded' in 86 or even Wu-Tang's debut, but not in this day-glo purposely-retro format propagated by groups like The Cool Kids.
Not in the form of super-lyrical multi-spitting display of verbal wizardry either. That shit has gone as far as it can or even should go.
Rap is long overdue for a watershed 'punk' reaction in the vein of the Stooges or Ramones debut albums.
Rap needs to be stripped of its artifice, immediately, because much like rock by the seventies, this music no longer is factually anti-establishment. It actually now IS the establishment.
Maybe the blow-back I'm hoping for won't even resemble rap music at all…I don't have any particular sound or image in mind.
Just know I'll know it when I hear it, while knowing it ain’t here yet. I might even hate it once it comes, but I'll still gladly welcome its arrival, because this 'fad' I grew up with has long since devolved into idol-worship and self-parody.
Enter Odd Future, Wolf Gang, Golf Wang into that cold, dark night.
Somewhere between Christmas Day 2009, when an eighteen-year-old Tyler the Creator released his independent, self-produced album Bastard, and the following year that brought sixteen-year-old rhyming prodigy Earl Sweatshirt's Earl, I had started to feel like it would be Odd Future that woke rap from its golden slumber, administering the adrenaline shot to charge the next wave, and send us hurdling into the light.
Needless to say, I hopped on board running, headfirst, feet flyin' up in the air...
In the subsequent eight summers since, Tyler, Earl, Frank Ocean and #OFWGKTA's lone female Syd The Kid's group The Internet would prove Nostrabombus half right.
YONKERS From Tylers Second Album GOBLIN.
I still remember where I was when I watched this clip for the first time, only a matter of months after becoming familiar with the movement Tyler had created.
The first live television appearance by the Wolf Gang, complete with garden gnomes and a girl doing an homage to 2002 nu-classic horror flick The Ring.
Tyler Earl And Domo Performs RUSTY On Late Night With David Letterman From Tylers WOLF Album.
Shout-out to Dave (or more likely, Paul) for putting them on, but the generation gap seems fairly pronounced by the time of his mic-spike exit.
This video, featuring the entire crew, at a photo-shoot for the posse cut "Oldie", rapping along to their lyrics live, as Tyler directs traffic on the fly with his hand in a cast, is perhaps the pinnacle of capturing a youth movement at its apex, before the inevitable splintering when teenagers become twenty-somethings, with real money plus career and life obligations taking them into disparate directions.
Many wuddershed moments followed, for this collective and also by extension, the author of this Streaming Consciously episode.
There were shows I attended, like this one, at the Palladium, on the Sunset Strip, that made me feel both reinvigorated but also provided a powerful reminder in my early thirties, that I was no longer a kid anymore. This fact was inescapable in my brain, while watching the madness spill about from the outer ring of the Palladium's roller-rink dance floor, never daring to venture far into the mouth of the impossibly young and aggressively adolescent crowd.
This wasn't totally about being an oldie tho, I once sold a pit ticket following Wu-Tang's set and jetted to the lawn before Rage Against The Machine came out, back when their shared summer-shed tour '97 came thru Camden NJ twenty summertimes ago. Moshing was never my thing, I just happened to some forms of music, that on occasion onstage brought forth that form of pugnaciousness.
When you are, as I now undeniably am, a music critic of the old-and-washed variety, these things are best scoped out from a respectful, almost anthropological, distance.
Note Jon Caramanica’s masterful June 2017 New York Times profile of the current “Soundcloud rap” phenomena, as a prime recent example.
Tyler, the de facto “RZA” figure of Odd Future’s “Wu-Tang”, created a brand with successes in a dizzying number of areas. Fashion iconography, graphic artistry, video direction, hosting/producing/starring in multiple television shows, boutique record labels, curation of Grammy-winning offshoot acts, plus more stuff I won't rack my brain further trying to list. Hipster and celebrity admirer love…would soon follow.
But in order for a movement, ostensibly about music, to truly transcend its own time, thus making a power-move towards timelessness…it’s still gotta have songs.
There’s still a need to certify the collective credentials with more than just classic moments but classic songs and albums too.
How many of those does Odd Future have?
It’s tough to say and depends on who you ask, but scant few forming anything resembling a cultural consensus.
How many of those does Tyler the Creator have?
That’s even tougher, as we now absorb his fourth "official" solo project.
I’m not sure any of the prior three could be put at the level of Earl or Syd’s best.
Meanwhile Frank Ocean now occupies his own space in pop culture so resoundingly, that many of his fans may not even know he started with Odd Future.
Surely, since 2010-2011, the Golf Wang/Wolf Gang’s collective catalog, has been trumped by a few of their peers.
They need look no further than just south or “Black Beverly Hills”, closer to the confines of grittier, inner-city existence, like Compton, or even Carson, where Top Dawg Entertainment via the Black Hippy movement, led by Kendrick Lamar, has lapped #OFWGKTA by far, when it comes to impact let alone quality of its canon.
Tyler, and/or Earl, are unlikely to ever headline Coachella, unless at some big, full-scale Odd Future reunion show, in 2025 or so, once the kids I saw in that Palladium mosh-pit, have been blessed to grow old enough to become nostalgic.
Tyler, one of the shrewdest young taste-makers to ever do it, surely knows this, as evidenced by his chirping crowd chatter of "you ain't got no classics" heard in mid-verse on "November".
From that knowledge seed filled with self-awareness, a Flower Boy hath sprouted.
We are hereby pleased to report, this is not only Tyler’s most accessible album, but also easily his most satisfying plus accomplished.
There is a decided emphasis on melody, a scaling back to more pointed raps, sonic cohesion adjoined by a warm steady stream of undeniable grooves.
This is an idealized version of an Odd Future summer album, from the city of Endless Summer, much like Earl Sweatshirt's headphone masterpiece, #2 on Streaming Consciously's Top 15 Albums of 2015, was the ultimate Hazy Shade of Winter album from that same Southland locale.
As we mentioned first in Streaming Consciously, exploring the new Jay-Z way back on the 17th, not only did Tyler bring out these pared-down verses, big hooks, memorable grooves, he also made sure to bring out the headlines this time.
The lead-up to its release, led to questions of whether Tyler had come out of the closet.
We still don’t really know that to be true, nor probably do many, or if any, of you.
That almost feels beside the point.
Odd Future has been “out”, with their DGAF attitude about who is or isn’t “out”, since almost the day they came out.
Its biggest selling male artist is an openly gay singer (Ocean).
Its original DJ is a lesbian who also sings, writes, plays piano/synth (Syd the Kid).
In foreground, Frank Ocean. In white-tee in middle, Syd the Kid of The Internet. Tyler to her right in Thrasher sweatshirt.
Tyler himself, took day-glo from the D.A.I.S.Y. age, fed it thru LA skate-punk filter, and then channeled Native Tongue Son Pharrell Williams Neptunes energy on the keyboard-led production end.
So while who Tyler bunks with is already a bunk topic, the following flack proved that Tyler, like Bowie in the seventies, was powerful enough as a personality to make any answer to the question irrelevant.
Being able to do that remains significant.
The headlines might not have been the only thing about this album’s milieu clinging to vestiges of shock value.
Tyler jettisoned much of the graphic language and/or fantastical, violently escapist imagery, Eminem-inspired tropes routine early in his career, that they once veered on becoming a doing-too-much crutch, immediately thereafter.
On Flower Boy, now-26-year-old Tyler the Creator, no longer seems fixated on being your mother’s least-favorite rapper.
The single, “Who Dat Boy”, assisted by Harlem icon/movement-starter-whose-catalog-should-hit-harder-A-Alike, ASAP Rocky, is the most traditional OF record on here, right down to the ridiculously indelible images from the video.
But most of the highlights on Flower Boy, center more around something resembling real life. Tyler pulls back the curtain some, revealing his inner-wizard doing so, as he comes clean about the loneliness at the top. It is easily both his most meta and most emotive work.
Look no further than one of the album's highlights, "911/Mr. Lonely", featuring Steve Lacy and Frank Ocean, which contains a clever flip of The Gap Band's "Outstanding", in between minor piano chords plus verses with lines like:
I'm the loneliest man alive
But I keep on dancin' to throw 'em off
I'm gon' run out of moves 'cause I can't groove to the blues
If you know any DJs, tell 'em to call me at nine-one-one
Watch the live performance of it this week, on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where those thoughts are shared under the glow of a Bumblebee disco-ball, surrounded by a collection of cool-as-fuck friends, featuring a Soul Train line, being performed by kids too young to even remember Soul Train airing.
Then there's "Pothole", easily the best piece of art to ever include Jaden Smith, regardless of how much you enjoy The Pursuit of Happyness or The Karate Kid.
The song also happens to be the best jawn about metaphorical potholes, since a classic dropped in ‘89 by those flower-flouting suburban teens De La Soul.
"Pothole" features strings that seem akin to De La's fellow legendary Long Island contemporaries EPMD, back in ‘88 on "Please Listen To My Demo".
It's aided by voices on the hook who sound like they're falling down a manhole. We'll go with this one as a highlight. At least it's one that had fellow #ThatSite alums, like my mans Doc Claw and Mike Beon, geeking out about it on social-media the night this album dropped. I was soon falling right in line with them once I heard it, then played it, again and again, like a 36 Chambers call-in.
In further Native Tongue fashion, "November" has members of Odd Future's extended family introducing themselves, in a similar vein or vision to De La's "I Am, I Be" back in '93.
Whether or not these minor keys, or others, such as Danny Elfman's strings from Pee Wee's Big Adventures subtly referenced on the lead single's, may be intentional, or coincidental, is essentially beside the point.
What matters as a listener/viewer, is we see plus hear the signal loud and clear here. Much like I once did, as a littlw kid, before Tyler was alive, back in 1985.
Perhaps in 2025, or whenever Tyler has stopped relentlessly pushing forward long enough to go looking back, whenever some old-and-washed journalist asks about bursting onto the scene at 18, but taking until age 26, or album #4, to finally start creating the consistently classic material he has always been capable, he can respond "I meant to do that".
Our future can begin once we look back.
