Before reading on, I must warn you that there may be some language here that could offend....
Part of
Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA), Tyler, the Creator is the prodigiously talented head honcho of this rap collective who are doing a great job of polarising opinion with a brutal "us v them" attitude to life. Their graphic lyrics, full of violence - sexual and otherwise - have provoked endless amount of words from the printed media who can't decide whether to admire the quality of the music, or hate the group for what they rap about. Tyler's
Goblin has just made matters more complicated....
It's everything about Tyler, the Creator that people find so fascinating. He comes across as a genuinely funny and often gentle young man in interviews, but once on stage he's a man possessed, with a deep growl of a rapping voice and stories of raping, kidnapping and assaulting women (sample lyric: 'I raped a pregnant bitch and told my friends I had a threesome') and a seemingly homophobic attitude. But then he also raps touchingly about his absent father, and speaks engagingly about his love for music outside of the rap genre (Grizzly Bear, Sex Pistols, Led Zeppelin).
Is it deliberate provocation, and a self-aware approach, or does Tyler really hold these views (the same allegations were aimed at the teenage Eminem)? He explains, perhaps glibly, that:
"It's the first shit that comes to our heads, seriously. I'm interested in serial killers' minds and shit, so I rap about it at the moment. Who the fuck knows, next week I can be rapping about oatmeal if that's what I'm into. And for the record, I don't worship the devil, I just hate religion."
You could argue that there's no difference between Tyler's approach than that of
Insane Clown Posse, but it's a little too simple to box off artists who indulge in such stomach-churning and challenging antics. To be honest, Tyler's and Odd Future's music is on another level to anything that ICP could ever hope to produce. It's two fingers up to the system ('Kill people, burn shit, fuck school' for example) in the same way that punk bands, Dischord hardcore acts and even Eminem did, and the music therein is astonishingly brilliant.
It's worth pointing out that Odd Future's DJ and musical bed is Syd Tha Kyd, a female who must be comfortable with what goes on in the lyrics of the crew, and crooner Frank Ocean, who's open about his support for gay marriage and a woman's right to choose. However, what you can hear on Goblin is absolutely not inclusive. You can't turn yourself off from the lyrics and concentrate on the music - it's all or nothing, and I know if I had children I wouldn't let them listen to this record until they were at least 16, and it's not an album I'd go recommending to all my female friends.
Turning to the record alone for a moment, it's without doubt one of the best rap records I've heard in a long time - possibly ever. It's a dense, claustrophobic affair, similar in tone to
Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein, or even Tricky's
Pre-Millennium Tension, and Tyler's stories draw you into his world and make you feel part of the group, and in on the joke (although there's not much humour to be found, other than Tyler's threats to pop clown Bruno Mars). It's as good as anything
Company Flow or
Anti-Pop Consortium ever produced, and the frightening thing is that Tyler is young, and can surely only get better.
The only thing I can say is that don't judge Goblin until you actually listen to it - if you can. It's a record that will never be an easy listen and demands that you don't separate any of the commodities into little boxes of their own. The music is utterly incredible, but the lyrical content will be the insurmountable stumbling block for a lot of people. I'm uncomfortable with the content myself, and thought long and hard about whether or not I should review the record on the blog, but I chose to simply because it's a great and uncompromising piece of art.
Tyler, the Creator is only just getting started and he's not about to disappear any time soon. And this means that there will be plenty more debates to come...
