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Spent the weekend covering Fun Fun Fun Fest - my last bow as an Austin360.com employee.
Saw Public Enemy, which meant I missed the Danzig fiasco (but wrote about its aftermath), got blown away by The Damned, saw Henry Rollins officiate a wedding on-site, met and hung out for a bit w/ our very own Z/James...
and saw Odd Future, who were nothing short of repugnant and stomach churning. Wrote about it. I've already been called a "black d ildo" in the comments section on this story.
By Chad Swiatecki | Sunday, November 6, 2011, 10:52 PM
Just before the close of Sunday’s set at Fun Fun Fun Fest’s blue stage, Odd Future frontman Tyler The Creator explained to the rabid and somewhat hypnotized throng of fans in front of him that it would be great if for his group’s last song “Radical,” the crowd would surge against an already weakened barricade and storm the stage.
He wasn’t explicitly telling them to create general mayhem, of course (wink), but if that’s what they were moved to do, well, he wasn’t going to even think about stopping them, though several of Tyler’s cohorts verbalized that group members would more than likely assault anyone who did venture on stage. The chaos that followed saw festival workers forcefully peeling audience members away from the performance structure while the group incited them forward from the lip of the stage, creating a sort of Maginot Line of ill will and hatred that pulled people toward it with a disturbing frenzy.
Prior to that exchange the night had seen:
a melee break out when several group members and on-stage entourage charged the crowd after one of countless projectiles (most of them partially full water bottles) volleyed toward the stage throughout the set struck one of the rappers or a group associate on stage.
everyone holding a microphone take extreme offense at a male-specific sex toy that was thrown onto the stage, with none of them wanting to touch or go near it because of mid- to high-grade homophobia among them. As context, this was not long after performing “Tron Cat,” where Tyler raps about raping a pregnant woman and bragging to friends about that act constituting having a threesome.
Tyler asking who in the audience still had both their birth parents in their lives, then giving a middle finger and its verbal equivalent to all those who answered in the affirmative. To be expected of the guy who named his debut solo album “Bastard,” when you think about it.
None of these individual actions should come as much of a surprise at this point since Odd Future’s fame has been built just about entirely on behavior that’s rebellious in its best moments, anti-social when calm and despicably hateful in many cases. But strung together those actions paint a clear picture of a group who behave in every phase as if they are beyond reproach, free from all responsibility for the consequences of any action taken by them as artists, ranging from blatant misogyny to outright physical violence.
As often presented in interviews and media accounts, the group members wore a petulant defiance about them for the entirety of their time on stage on Sunday. The affect of this in words and body language was the inarguable belief that they deserve to be listened to because they’re talking the loudest, and anyone who questions or contradicts them deserves whatever type of street/pit justice should befall them.
They’re hardly the first musicians who’ve been guilty of such a disconnect. It’s what much of the punk movement was built on, and Odd Future have rightfully been compared to hardcore punk bands because of the unbridled and frankly ugly fury they unleash on audiences. But at least Suicidal Tendencies let a sense of humor peek through, and the Cro-Mags acknowledged their role in a messed up world beyond themselves, whereas Odd Future on Sunday were entirely humorless and displayed all the artistic tact of a 10-year-old who’s just figured out how to make prank phone calls and spends hours barking obscenities at whoever’s unfortunate enough to pick up on the other end. All release, no resonance.
We’re now nearly two years into Odd Future’s ascendance from rap’s underground. With all members somewhere around the age of 20 it’s worth wondering if this is the beginning stage of a larger creative arc for the group, or if “Radical“‘s chorus/command (here approximated due to obscenity) of “Kill people, burn (stuff), (forget) school” is as nuanced as they’ll ever get as artists.
It’s not entirely impossible to imagine since similarly gratuitous offenders have made the leap to respectability through the years. Ice Cube spent his early adulthood glorifying selling drugs and committing guiltless violence - like Odd Future, he helped author a song called “F—- The Police” - and 20 years later he’s accepted as a leading director of family films. And the Beastie Boys were castigated as dumbbell sexists - and crappy live performers - before they gave the world “Paul’s Boutique” and “Check Your Head” and made political pals with the Dali Lama.
So there’s hope, however currently faint. Group member Frank Ocean (absent Sunday due to illness) is an acknowledged talent and sought-after producer with good reason, and it’s futile to deny Tyler The Creator’s charisma and presence even if you hate just about everything he does with it. Take those building blocks with the mammoth group’s sprawling output and give them some sort of focus and it’s entirely possible we’ll eventually see something of lasting creative merit emerge from under the Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All banner. No idea who could manage such a task, but time will tell if it can be done.
That’s all speculative and well into the future, of course. For now the reality is what happened on Sunday night; turbo-charged hate going into those microphones and pouring out of those speakers onto a crowd that spent an evening basking in the spectacle of unchecked and unrepentant aggression. For them, it was an hour-plus of mostly consequence-free release. For others it felt like trench warfare in the worst moments, and an endurance test from start to finish.
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Kwame Kilpatrick texted to his mistress: "NEXT TIME, JUST TELL ME TO SIT DOWN, SHUT UP, and DO YOUR THING! I'm fucked up now!"
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