(Odd Future, a sprawling bunch with 10 regular members, like a baby Wu-Tang Clan, performs together live but has only assembled tracks for two mixtapes.) Their songs are wildly aggressive and boundlessly creative, the wordplay crazy-clever and surprisingly sharp.īut it's those rhymes - peppered as they are with rape, kidnapping, murder and torture fantasies, blasphemy, homophobia, you name it - that's fixated the press and helped elevate this cult rap collective to the level of a Billboard magazine cover in March and last month's in-depth New Yorker feature, and it's the casual, matter-of-fact delivery of them that makes parents and activists apoplectic.
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Odd Future, scheduled to perform July 17 at the annual Pitchfork Music Festival, has turned heads with some of the freshest sounds in hip-hop, heard mostly in tracks given away free online and on myriad solo projects by the group's members. They're called OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All), and they're a large, young hip-hop collective that's become one of the most divisive topics in music. They've also been called "inexcusable," "reprehensible" and "dangerous" for lyrics that are frequently violent, misogynist, anti-gay and anti-police. They've been called "the future of the music business" for their freewheeling, Internet-based approach to recording and distribution. These motherf-ers think I'm supposed to live up to something? I'm a 19-year-old f-ing emotional roller coaster with pipe dreams Odd Future's strange present: Local advocates seek to balance lyrics of rape, violence, homophobia HB: Yeah, called "Damien." There's no set date or any stress on it. HB: I'd still be doing it, trying to get where I am, with or without someone's money. Q: "Not that it matters"? You could take or leave the money? We enjoy doing it, that's why we make a lot of it. We're getting paid for it now, not that it matters. What inspires you to be so creative and so fast? Q: You and Left Brain are cranking out a lot of music. How much of that is your idea and how much is the vision of the director (Matt Alonzo)? I never thought I'd be doing something like that.
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Q: How was it lying in a coffin full of snakes for the "64" video?
(Someone in the background then shouted "No, tell him no, Hodgy!" and laughed.) Q: Is there going to be an Odd Future album? HB: It'll be more personal, more hands-on. Q: How will they differ from the whole group's shows? When "Numbers" comes out, we'll do our own tours. Q: Will there be some MellowHype shows in the future? HB: A bunch of niggers rocking the f- out. HB: Before shows we remind each other, hey, everybody's excited and into it and everybody wants to be on stage, but let's try to keep it minimal.
Q: With up to 10 people onstage at Odd Future gigs, how do you keep it from getting too confusing? Left Brain drops a beat and it's, there you go. HB: We work together and with other people. Q: You work together as MellowHype within Odd Future, do you also work as a unit? HB: I was just waiting for someone else to come along to make music with. HB: We've known each other, sh-, probably since the second semester of 10th grade. Musically, people out here are more into it. The crowds are really in love with Odd Future.
The festival shows have been very, very intense. Q: How have the shows been in Europe this month? When we weren't rehashing the controversy about the group's violent lyrics, there was other stuff to talk about. We caught up with Hodgy Beats last week following Odd Future's performance at the T in the Park festival in Scotland, the last of a string of dates for the group across Europe. The duo's self-released 2010 album "Blackendwhite" was reissued this week by Fat Possum Records with extra tracks, and a new album, "Numbers," is expected later this year. Hodgy Beats and Left Brain, members of hotly debated rap group Odd Future - appearing Sunday afternoon at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago's Union Park - also work together under the name MellowHype. Q&A with Hodgy Beats from MellowHype, Odd Future This post contains my complete running coverage of this annual festival.