Bastard Swordsman

In the past few months, buzz surrounding the young crew of California emcees and producers collectively known as Odd Future Wolf Gang has spread like wildfire. Not only have they amassed quite a following via free albums released through OddFuture.com but they’ve also captured the imaginations of Hip Hop oldheads as well. This is actually quite intriguing since we oldheads typically hate most new rappers and groups. Why are Odd Future Wolf Gang any different?

I’d seen Odd Future projects with the weird cover art all over the internet for a while now. I’d even heard the names Tyler The Creator, Earl Sweatshirt, Hodgy Beats, Left Brain and Domo Genesis from time to time form many of my Hip Hop blogging peers all throughout 2010. However, it wasn’t until my boy Has-Lo played a song called “Earl” on the Scrunchface Show this past Summer then sent me some YouTube and download links to other Odd Future projects and crew members I wasn’t previously aware of that I began to really take notice of them.

Once I began listening to various Odd Future offerings at the recommendation of many of my peers (including Rosalinda) I was instantly engrossed and needed to hear more but I couldn’t exactly pinpoint why at first. After poring through release after release and consistently finding songs that I’d keep on repeat for 15 minutes or more at a time it finally dawned on me exactly why I and a surprising amount of my peers were so receptive to Odd Future’s music. It reminded us of the old tried and true Backpack Rap aesthetic all over again.

Odd Future is a collective of teenagers that live in California and they not only rhyme and make beats but they skate as well. The best thing about Odd Future is they’ve developed their own lane and they don’t give a fuck. They make their music and release it to the public without worrying if it’s going to make a popular blog or if they’ll get signed. The industry is clearly not on their minds when they make music as 95% of Odd Future’s music isn’t radio friendly.

Oddly enough, the songs that are the least radio friendly are the ones my peers have played the most often on their online radio shows. The production perfectly fits the bars and the members of the crew can all spit although there is often dispute as to who in the crew is the nicest and/or the breakout star. This distinction seems to fall on Tyler The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt. If Odd Future Wolf Gang was the Wu Tang Clan when they first hit then Tyler is RZA and Earl is Method Man.

The two Odd Future projects that my peers seem to focus on the most are Tyler The Creator’s “Bastard” and Earl Sweatshirt’s “Earl”. It’s surprising and refreshing to see so many older Hip Hop fans actually embrace some new emcees and producers for once. Especially since they’re not interested in making music that’s easily marketable and they genuinely seem to hate the media and having us gush over them. Weird, right?

In conversations with older heads they’ve revealed that it brings them back to when they saw or heard new underground Hip Hop on Sandbox Automatic, Hip Hop Site or Underground Hip Hop via RealPlayer clips or on 88HipHop.com. That same feeling of newness, excitement and discovery that had then they have now with Odd Future releases.

That same DIY/Independent As Fuck attitude and aesthetic that made us gravitate to different crews during the Backpack Era (1997-2002) is fully embodied in the OFWGKTA’s music. The beats don’t sound radio or club ready and their subject matter and lyrical content is clearly a byproduct of these teenagers being completely counter to the wave of culture the media has inundated them with their entire conscious lives.

Odd Future Wolf Gang’s approach to production, recording and distributing their musical output to the masses might be done much the same way most aspiring artists in 2010 do but they convey to us the same attitude as the crews whose records used to be popular purchases at Fat Beats between 10 to 15 years prior. Ironically, they’re throwbacks without really trying too hard to be (although in their music they often make references that infer they were influenced by this era. Odd). Even they seem to be surprised at their newfound “popularity”.

If you listen to tracks like “Seven”, “Assmilk”, “Pigions”, “Luper”, “Sandwitches”, “CopKiller”, “Super Market”, or any other random OFWGKTA selections you’ll agree they do evoke a feeling similar to the indie Hip Hop songs we copped on vinyl back in the late 90’s and early 00’s. These tracks could’ve been recorded on Tascam 488 MK II 4 track recorders and produced with EPS 16’s or ASR-10’s  back then and they would’ve resonated with those fans the same way they do now.

Now that they’ve achieved some semblance of success and several Hip Hop blogs, music publications and even a few labels have come to gawk at them or show interest the Odd Future gang remain skeptical. Some might wonder how a group of kids spitting misogynistic bars about murder, drugs, violence, and whatever offensive or taboo subject you can think of draws in older Hip Hop fans. That’s an easy question to answer, we came up listening to Gangsta N.I.P., DMG, Spice-1, Kool G Rap, Nasty Nas, Big L, Akinyele, RA The Rugged Man (Crustified Dibbs), Necro, Cage, Non Phixion, Eminem and Horrorcore during our formative years.

That being the case, we aren’t turned off by the subject matter, all it does is remind us of the “good ol’ days” of Hip Hop. In this current era of cats rapping about their material possessions and the nonstop pursuit of fame, money, power, chart position, BDS spins, unit sales and status it’s ironically a breath of fresh air to hear some one say “Fuck you all!” on record. A little nihilism and genuine disgust with the status quo is just what I want to hear right now. We actually need it to be perfectly honest.

Another thing that the rise of Odd Future Wolf Gang points out without any intention of doing so is the complete lack of balance in today’s music scene. Whereas back in the days we had a plethora of groups and artists that occupied different lanes and they all could get time on the radio or MTV and BET. Those days are now long dead and if we hear anything smacking of originality compared to the dearth of inspiring music that’s forced on the masses there’s no question why so many people have responded to it.

That’s how and why a gang of foul mouthed skater kids from California ended up getting embraced by thirtysomething Hip Hop heads, various Hip Hop bloggers like myself, Khal, Noz and Combat Jack to Hot 97 radio show hosts like Peter Rosenberg. And to think, they were once pissed off that Nah Right and 2DopeBoyz wouldn’t post their material.

With the two main draws being Tyler The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt things are made even crazier due to the fact that Tyler became the default group leader because of his age and Earl was sent to boot camp by his mother and is being kept from participating in any of the recent Odd Future shows. This gives MellowHype members Hodgy Beats and Left Brain the opportunity to slide in and occupy the Raekwon and Ghostface Killah role in this ten man Rap ensemble.

I’m sure some of you are feeling some trepidation at the Wu Tang Clan comparisons so I offer you some more that you may be more comfortable with: D.I.T.C, The Great 8 of the Boot Camp Click, Hieroglyphics Crew, Solesides Crew, Outsidaz, Demigodz, Army Of The Pharaohs or Weathermen. Any way you word it, the definitely harken back to a foregone era and bring with them something that is sorely lacking nowadays. Is this attraction to their music subconscious? It may be with some but not really for me.

Why fight that old feeling of discovering something new and instantly liking it? Didn’t we grow up doing that with the overwhelming number of our favorite artists and groups? Have we become so cynical and distrustful that we won’t allow ourselves to anymore?

Instead of hoping that things DON’T go wrong and they don’t become too popular too fast or that they sell out or sign with the wrong label let’s just do what we did back in the days: Enjoy the goddamn music.

One.

I am thoroughly confused by the present day as a whole. Why lie? The lines have completely blurred and I have trouble determining reality from parody in today’s music and entertainment industries. Things that people use to joke about as extremes are often happening and being passed off on us as our regular entertainment. Is this an alternate reality? Are we through the looking glass? Has everyone gone crazy? What exactly is really going on?

If you spend enough time on World Star Hip Hop or even a Viacom network like MTV Jams (since MTV & VH1 don’t actually play videos anymore) you’ll come across videos and artists that look and sound like something that was cooked up by a comedy troupe or an ensemble that specializes in urban satire or parodies. Once the video is done you realize that this is a real artist. That was a real song. That was a real video and said artist is signed to a real label. The joke’s on you. The joke’s on all of us. I’m not laughing.

The purpose of parody and satire is to take the current state of affairs then to take them to an extreme in order to show the overall absurdity of the times. The sad truth is that the current stable of artists that pervade the music industry have left us with no extremes to go to. I often make shit up on Twitter just to find out later that the scenario I cooked up as a joke has actually manifested itself in real life. This is extremely disturbing to me.

The dumbing down of America has pervaded every single aspect of our lives even if we haven’t noticed it. It’s completely ravaged the overall quality of our media. The byproducts include the slow death of print and television journalism in favor of tabloid journalism and celebrity news. Original scripted programming has often been scrapped in favor of cheaper to produce reality television shows so the quality of the entire field as a whole has also dropped. This all won’t end well.

It’s also resulted in the eventual removal of most artists with overwhelming talent, originality or any real substance from the music industry. When’s the last time anyone signed a Public Enemy or even a Dead Prez? Marketability has trumped talent and substance. Is there any coincidence that during this same post Telecommunications Act period it’s also been discovered that America also has a health & weight problem in addition to an education crisis? I don’t think so. Everything is everything.

I’ll watch an episode of “The Boondocks” and laugh my ass off at the over the top, super ignorant antics of Thugnificent and the Lethal Interjection Crew or Gangstalicious. I’ll then see someone in Hip Hop do something even MORE ignorant in real life right afterwards. I remember when people used to do parody Rap songs and make them purposely derivative or overly ignorant to prove a point. Nowadays, this is exactly the same kind of shit that gets burn on the radio. These are the kinds of cats that make MTV “hottest” lists. This is what gets played at the club.

It would be different if there were any alternatives to these artists at the mainstream level but there aren’t. Gucci Mane gets right out of jail and releases his album. Lil’ Boosie releases his album from jail. T.I. gets out of jail just in time for his film “Takers” to come out and hit #1 in theaters before he gets arrested and goes back to jail so his album “King Uncaged” has to be pushed back and the title needs to be changed to “No Mercy” instead.

Lil’ Wayne releases “I Am Not A Human Being” from jail and when he’s finally released from prison people rejoice as if he was Nelson Mandela. These aren’t “The Boondocks” episodes. This all actually happened in real life. Between Shyne converting to Judaism and getting out of jail then getting deported to Belize where L.A. Reid flew to sign him for a gang of dough just to have his music be terrible is enough to make my head explode.

I have given up being surprised at the ridiculous or ignorant things that happen in the music industry. I only get angry and/or frustrated now. I get angry that things have been allowed to get to this point in the first place. I get frustrated that no one seems to be as appalled as I am at the state of the current Rap industry. I’m in awe that these record executives can sleep at night. I’m surprised that no one in the Hip Hop media has completely snapped yet. Don’t they know there’s something wrong with all this shit?

Antoine Dodson performed at the BET Hip Hop Awards recently. That never should’ve happened. It never should’ve been signed off on. He simply shouldn’t have been there. BET has meaningless slogans like “Music Matters”. BULLSHIT. If the music truly mattered to them, they’d play and air better music on the network and they wouldn’t disgrace the art of Hip Hop by allowing things like that to occur in the first damn place. I thought that was common sense? Guess not, huh?

Atlantic Records (the same label that didn’t release Saigon’s “The Greatest Story Never Told” and refused to release Lupe Fiasco’s “L.A.S.E.R.S” until he initiated a campaign that forced the label to give him an actual release date) went out and signed the mentally challenged rapper 50 Tyson to a record deal. When the news first broke I thought it was a Twitter joke. Once I discovered that it was actually true I damn near had an aneurysm.

Two singles were released to promote Lil’ Wayne’s new album “I Am Not A Human Being”. The first announced leak from the album was a song featuring Drake called “Gonorrhea”. I thought this was a joke at first, that was until I checked my e-mail and saw no less than 5 links to the aforementioned song. When I heard the song I just sighed to myself knowing that this generation of Rap fans is being shortchanged in every single way imaginable.

We’re at the point now where the current music listening and buying audience under the age of 25 isn’t even aware that there’s anything currently wrong with the music industry or the overall quality of music. Most of the great artists and producers that we came up with are completely irrelevant to them. They don’t realize that the music they’re currently listening to has been diluted, watered down and A&R’d to ensure it does well at radio or gets spins in the club without any thought being put into whether or not the music itself is actually any GOOD or not.

It’s almost as if there are no standards anymore. You’d think there were no adults with common sense or self awareness left in the music industry. I’m convinced there’s absolutely no one to say “No”. You’d think that no one in the industry had any clue what quality material that would stand the test of time even sounds like anymore. The evidence is everywhere. Either everyone is inept and stupid or they know better and they’re purposely allowing these things to happen.

It’s sobering and discouraging to flip through one of the few remaining Rap magazines and see Roscoe Dash or Cali Swag District getting ink instead someone with better material. It’s almost as if you’re in an alternate reality where wackness is the new dope and vice versa. Soulja Boy and other artists of his ilk often say that they aren’t trying to be lyrical and people (including music journalists) go along with that and don’t call him on it. WHAT? Hold up a minute…

What you’re telling me is that you’re a Hip Hop journalist co-signing someone speaking against lyrical excellence or having compelling lyrical content? If you do that then you’re part of the problem for accepting the low standards in music as well as the overall low quality of it. Every time a list of the “hottest” emcees or rappers is aired on MTV or BET or a list is written in a Hip Hop publication if the main criterion isn’t talent and the overall quality of the artist’s material then it’s instantly BULLSHIT.

I have trouble understanding how you can assemble a group of Hip Hop journalists that spend all their time discussing classic material and writing books about timeless Hip Hop sit around a table discussing insignificant minutiae about mediocre rappers that no one will care about in three to five years. Isn’t that obvious to anyone but me? Are they really calling Waka Flocka Flame “hot” with straight faces? Have they even HEARD Hip Hop before? Is this the third level of an inception?

If the quality of the music you’re reporting on is mediocre then any show you produce reporting or chronicling it will also be mediocre by default. It’s mathematics, God. If BDS spins, video spins and sales are the lone criteria for determining who’s “hot” when 75% of the greatest or most influential artists in history never moved a significant amount of units but inspired people to write books about them and pick up mic, decks and beat machines then doesn’t that mean these lists are all really inconsequential and backwards?

In closing, there’s one thing I use to keep me sane during this odd era where being good at what you do gets frowned upon but being wack, unoriginal, non lyrical and lacking any lyrical content or depth of any kind gets you accolades, praise and radio play. I ask myself if whatever artist I’m listening to’s music will be worth owning 5 years from now. If so, I rock with it. If not, I dispose of it. That’s why it’s called disposable music, after all. I write about that music that inspires me in light of the bullshit that pervades the marketplace today.

 If a new “Book Of Rap Lists” was made today, 85% of the rappers and emcees in the game today at the major label level wouldn’t even be worthy of getting mentioned in it. That being the case then why are they who everyone is focusing on? If the industry was actually about quality again then we wouldn’t be where we are today, wondering whether or not that new bullshit we heard about was actually a real song or not until we get links to the CDQ version in our Gmail inboxes.

One.

Nicki Minaj’s “Pink Friday” has been making the rounds with the Bloggerati for a least a week and it hit the internets between one and two days ago. The general consensus is that Nicki Minaj’s “Pink Friday” sucks. The project’s buzz was enormous. Nicki Minaj also broke a Billboard record for having the most songs on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time. In any other era of music history this accomplishment would actually be impressive but I’ll explain why it really isn’t below.

She’s received co-signs from everyone with a name in the music industry as well as accolades from everyone you could possibly imagine all before her debut album even dropped. She has a documentary set to air on MTV near the end of the month. Now that the culmination of all that hard work and overwhelming industry hype is a piece of flaming hot garbage it’s time to retrace our steps and figure out how the supposed savior of female emcees got to her place as a media darling in the first place.

I’d been hearing Nicki Minaj via her mixtape appearances since about 2006 via AllHipHop.com and Boxden but I never once took her serious because regardless of the pictures I saw of her online as I was never impressed with her bars or her music. Eventually, Nicki Minaj began a relationship with Lil’ Wayne and his Young Money imprint. In August 2009, it was made official and Nicki Minaj signed a deal with Young Money/Universal.

As soon as that signing became official “the push” went into overdrive. With a corporate machine behind her, the co-sign of “the greatest rapper alive” Lil’ Wayne in addition to the recent Young Money acquisition of Drake her signing became more of an event. You also have to take into account that Nicki Minaj was pretty much the lone female emcee in the industry. Due to her business and industry relationships and crew affiliation she was automatically tied to damn near everyone in the industry with a heartbeat.

She was also in that rare space of being one of the few artists in the industry that were legitimately considered “hot” so when people in the industry went looking for features guess where they went first? To put all of Nicki Minaj’s features and guest appearances into perspective when Jay-Z was in the studio with Robin Thicke doing “Meiple”, Robin Thicke mentioned that he had a record that needed something extra and Jay-Z himself suggested Nicki Minaj to him for the song that became “Shake It For Daddy”. Jay fuckin’ Z. The God MC. Former president of Def Jam Records. Let that marinate.

Being that the entire industry is in dire straits and everyone is looking for a hit they are going to reach out for whoever is the hottest at the moment for features. It happened with T-Pain and Akon when they were on everyone’s hooks and it often resulted in them being on 5 or more songs at a time in rotation on the radio.  Also consider the fact that Nicki Minaj is the only female emcee that’s even relevant at the major label level which will get her even more work.

You must also factor in that the radio only plays 20 damn songs in it’s rotation at any given time. This is how Nicki Minaj was able to have so many songs on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously. In essence, it’s akin to when in the 90’s all of a sudden multiple players began having 40+ home run seasons simultaneously when before it was considered impressive when a player hit more than 25 in a season. Later on, it was discovered that these players were taking performance enhancing drugs so this whole stretch of broken records was achieved through artificial means.

 Since Nicki was hot and the only game in town in an industry with only 5-8 artists moving units it’s safe to say that the entire Rap game is on steroids. Nicki Minaj’s buzz was tied into so many surrounding factors regarding her being all over the radio, all over the print media and the Rap blogosphere that when the industry co-signs came those of us that listened to female emcees with superior talent on the regular that got no shine saw this push develop it created an inevitable anti Nicki Minaj backlash.

Nicki Minaj raised her profile by taking racy pictures, playing up her possible bisexuality, calling herself a Barbie, rapping in ridiculous accents and changing her delivery as if she was schizophrenic during songs. She also developed this off the wall image that includes ridiculous wigs and over the top costumes. It’s as if being herself and relying strictly on the quality of her bars in the industry isn’t enough. Who are we kidding? It isn’t, otherwise Lady Gaga would just perform under her government name.

In any event, she built up a devoted cult following of “Barbies” that dress up like her and recite her bars (yes, men are included in this army of stans). Nicki Minaj is currently 75% image. Let’s discuss her actual talent for once, shall we? On the mic, Nicki Minaj is mediocre at best. She does have some occasional flashes of brilliance and from time to time she will spit a clever line but these events are few and far between. I don’t care how good you look or how fat your ass is when I’m listening to an artist’s music. I judge strictly on talent. That being the case, Nicki Minaj falls short with me.

I consistently choose talent and substance over image and talentwise Nicki Minaj doesn’t warrant the level of attention or praise she currently receives from critics, industry heads and artists alike. When you have Kanye West saying dangerous things like Nicki Minaj could be one of the greatest artists ever or when people compare Nicki Minaj to Lauryn Hill you need to step back and do knowledge to exactly what’s taking place. MTV is about to air a documentary about Nicki Minaj called “My Time Is Now” on November 28th. The last time MTV did a documentary for an album release was for her labelmate Drake. Coincidence?

Didn’t Steve Rifkind also say on record that Asher Roth’s “Asleep In The Bread Aisle” would be a Hip Hop classic and a game changer last year? Who even remembers that damn album now? When’s the last time anyone even played it? The Rap game is currently in it’s steroids era and the media is BALCO. The media hype machine in tandem with corporate entities push out these mediocre artists to the masses and time and again it blows up in their faces when the final product is mediocre. Mediocre talent produces mediocre music. It’s mathematics, God.

The tired practice of pursuing “hotness” or artificially generating it is beyond tiresome. It’s also transparent when certain entertainers or entities attempt to keep themselves “hot” or maintain their “relevance” by attaching themselves to whomever is hot at the time. I’m speaking of Diddy, of course. Jay Electronica went and signed with Roc Nation instead of with Bad Boy. If Diddy stopped being a Bugatti Boy with Rick Ross and dancing in Nicki’s videos maybe things would’ve gone differently. By the way, Diddy also co-signs Nicki Minaj. He’s also said that Rick Ross is the new Biggie Smalls so his credibility is shot.

So here we are. Nicki Minaj is all over the radio. She’s all over the newsstand. She’s all over the television. Her name is on the lips of everyone with a name worth mentioning. Her album is highly anticipated and expectations are sky high. The album hits music journalists, critics, bloggers and then the fans and it’s met with less than favorable reactions. The general consensus is the album is schizophrenic and sounds like a mediocre collection of radio singles and club songs as opposed to a concise album. Is this really a surprise to anyone?

We are in an era where we value image far more than actual talent and creativity. We are in an era where mediocrity is rewarded and excellence is frowned upon for fear it won’t be understood or it may be to hard to market. We are in an era where record labels, music publications and mass media are desperate for superstars. So much so they’re willing to manufacture them through whatever means they have available to them.

Nicki Minaj is currently killing the game. A game where she has absolutely no competition. A game where everyone is helping her out by feeding her the ball every possession and when she does score they all remark that she’s one of the greatest ever to do it. A game where her jersey is the only one being sold at the arena. A game where the referees have been told to not call her for double dribbling, traveling or offensive fouls or they’ll be considered “haters”. All that notwithstanding, she’s still dominating the game, B.

“Pink Friday” is going to drop soon. It doesn’t even matter if the album is any good, it only matters how many units it moves. This is why I had to push back my other pieces to stay up until 5 AM to bang this particular piece out. In this MTV Top 10 Hottest Rappers list era “hotness” and “relevance” translates to spins and units sold. Image and buzz currently overrules talent and the quality of the actual music. All this current practice is doing is killing the music itself. In turn, it’s also killing the fans. The average modern music fan wouldn’t be able to recognize a truly great artist if their lives depended on it.

Forget that Nicki Minaj is the lone female emcee on the major label market and the industry has tricked some of you into believing she’s going to usher in a new era or resurgence of female emcees. There never stopped being female emcees. There are at least 50 currently active that make Nicki Minaj sound like 50 Tyson in comparison. Don’t fall for the okeydoke. This is all smoke and mirrors. The rap game is on steroids and everyone in the game that gets an overwhelming amount of love that has a larger than life image and not the talent to match needs to have an asterisk next to their names on the charts. Real talk.

One.