Far End of The Lyrical Spectrum: Whitehouse, GG, OFWGKTA

[Dan Warburton]

Try the Zeitkratzer album press release / liners

Says more about Zeitkratzer than Bennett, if you ask me.

Quite.
http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magaz ... xt.html#10 (scroll down)
I see I made the same remark about "lyrics" there too. I repeat myself when under stress I repeat myself when under stress

[leroysghost]

in googling just now it seems Bennett wasn't too happy either (he mentions typos and factual errors; maybe in reference to the chess grandmaster bit...). he does his best to be flattered, but he is as confused as to why they put a race car on the front as anybody.

[bryan]

Odd Future are for the children.

[bkudler]

Just watched (heard) 4 OFWGKTA songs online (I hadn't heard of them - thanks for the heads up, though I won't be going back often), and don't see what the fuss is about. Sounds like just another boring gangsta crew to me. Rape, bitch, dick, blabla, it's as dull as the music. Sounds like the tracks were thrown together in about 20 minutes. In terms of "lyrics" (surely not the word), I still haven't seen much "evolution" since the Geto Boys, and they were around before Tyler the Creator was even born.
Odd triumvirate of acts, bk - lumping these rappers together with a circus clown like Allin and an act like Whitehouse seems strange to me. And the Boyd Rice clip you linked to is hilariously old (David Tibet???).

Dan, very glad you decided to jump in! On the subject of lumping in these rappers with Allin and the Whitehouse boys is that all three seem interested in intense misanthropy that is often times contradictory. You probably didn't get to OF stuff where they talk about how they are Nazis, but it seems that rape and NAZIsm are about the two most offensive subject matters going, and GG, OF, and Whitehouse all seemed to want to comment on them in some way. If someone showed you each of the three and you knew nothing about them --didn't know GG was a circus clown, that Bennett is a nice bloke etc...-- then you would think this is some of the most offensive filth you have ever heard. However, if you listen to more of their stuff you would find their lyrics often contradict themselves and quickly their meaning and intent gets very skewed and the question arises, what is the point, if any, of their lyrics? or why are they saying these things?

Also Dan, OFWGKTA has pretty different lyrical stuff from the rest of the rap community. Even in the rap world it is pretty rare to find people bragging about rape, NAZIsm, kidnapping, doing anything gay, etc...

The Boyd Rice clip maybe old, doesn't mean he didn't still say it. I don't care how fucking long ago you went on a NAZI TV show and said you wanted to help with their cause! It doesn't make him any less of a filthy cowardly NAZI fuck, who better not come around this Jew anytime soon.... That goes double for anyone who wants to defend that clip/him.

[Dan Warburton]

Thanks for the info - yes, for sure, racism / sexism are always the buttons to push if you want elicit a response.. I've never been a great fan of all that SS rubbish the early noiseniks used to throw about, but I've always put it down to youthful enthusiasm (ha!) (that would go for the rappers too) rather than serious political posturing. As for Mr Rice, I don't know.. he strikes me as being more naive than sinister in that clip.
All I can say is I still enjoy listening to NON and their ilk today, dubious lyrics notwithstanding (not that you can ever really understand what they're bawling about), whereas I find the gangsta rap stuff musically débandante.. and I even went back to relisten to Compton's Most Wanted and Geto Boys to remind myself of what I felt first time round. It just hasn't aged well, but they had good samples. Anyway, as abiding proof for my youthful enthusiasm for gangsta, check out the title of the album I've just released (see sig below)

[leroysghost]

[johnson]

Geto Boys were an altogether different thing again. Listen to "Chuckie"; Bushwick Bill is rapping about cake mix, stabbing polar bears and eating dog's brains while tossing out total nonsense like "come out shooting with my head in a bird's chest" and "before I die cut off my leg and let me die in Iraq". Pure surrealist poetry. They were geniuses.

[bryan]

Odd Future also want to deter parents and old people, this is part of the reason for shocking content as far as I can suss out (but it seemed to backfire in the case of Earl's Mom sending him to bootcamp or whatever...). Other than that, one day we were all kids and had energy and aggression without a place to channel it and I'd rather see it come out in a creative impulse rather than acting out in "real life". They are much more punk than gangsta, the latter I have not heard applied to them at all except here (it's OK, not everyone has to be informed about rap.. but it's nice to see other groups being mentioned rather than Public Enemy, the usual go-to example for standards of yesteryear).

I'm going to go listen to Earl Sweatshirt - epaR for the 50th time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re-iKOvz8LI

And like Jon said, Tyler's Bastard album is really good. If one can get past the shock there's pathos, but without the harsh bits the feeling wouldn't seem as compelling. For beat aesthetics OF leans heavily on the Neptunes.. and this is something I really like at least.

Dismissing new rap music due to lack of lyrical content really misses where much of the innovation has been happening in the past 5 years or so.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

The Boyd Rice clip maybe old, doesn't mean he didn't still say it. I don't care how fucking long ago you went on a NAZI TV show and said you wanted to help with their cause! It doesn't make him any less of a filthy cowardly NAZI fuck, who better not come around this Jew anytime soon.... That goes double for anyone who wants to defend that clip/him.

yeah, I once wrote a paper about the political aspects of that whole scene, with a focus on the Swedish Cold Meat Industry label. the problem is they don't take responsibility for their words, imagery, etc. It's all cloaked behind a veil of heaps of bullshit ("as an artist I'm just exploring the negative side of things", "it's not political", etc. etc.), depending on who interviews them, etc.

I think it's safe to say most of these people first & foremost suffer from some kind of personal superiority complex, a complex that makes them confused about fascism ("of course real fascism isn't okay, but if I were to be the ruler, I'd be an enlightened etc."), that combined a with romantic view about art and an interest for the 'Dark' gets you easily at the far end of the lyrical spectrum.

[Dan Warburton]

a filthy cowardly NAZI fuck, who better not come around this Jew anytime soon....

Just on a point of order here (though I fully appreciate the strength of your feelings.. you should have heard what Steve Reich said to me once about Wagner..), I haven't seen any moderator "watch your language" warnings as a result of this. Perhaps if Mr Rice was Ms Rice and you'd used the word "bitch" we'd have had some.. and I'll bet if someone had written "filthy cowardly Jewish fuck" the sky would have fallen in

I once wrote a paper about the political aspects of that whole scene, with a focus on the Swedish Cold Meat Industry label. the problem is they don't take responsibility for their words, imagery, etc. It's all cloaked behind a veil of heaps of bullshit ("as an artist I'm just exploring the negative side of things", "it's not political", etc. etc.), depending on who interviews them, etc. I think it's safe to say most of these people first & foremost suffer from some kind of personal superiority complex, a complex that makes them confused about fascism ("of course real fascism isn't okay, but if I were to be the ruler, I'd be an enlightened etc."), that combined a with romantic view about art and an interest for the 'Dark' gets you easily at the far end of the lyrical spectrum.

Very good comment - was that paper in English?

[sevenarts]

If one can get past the shock there's pathos, but without the harsh bits the feeling wouldn't seem as compelling.

This seems the key to OF, to me, and especially Tyler and Earl. The first track on Bastard is an especially good example, as it introduces the album as arising, first and foremost, from misplaced rage at an absent father. It's such a great track, and a heartbreaking one, as Tyler switches back and forth from venting at his father to spitting all sorts of undirected rage every which way, and ends with him saying he wants his father's email so he could say all this stuff to him more directly. It suggests, among other things, that they're pretty self-aware about where all this anger is coming from, and also that putting it into song form is an effective way of getting it all out.

There's also, as others have said, a level of cartoonish exaggeration in OF that prevents all the rage and violence from being taken too seriously - take the Domo/Tyler track "Supermarket," in which the two rappers trade increasingly outrageous insults and threats, culminating with some nonsense about missile launchers and coming back as zombies - they're so clearly kids having a load of fun, and that's infectious even when the songs get deadly serious.

[RJMyato]

sevenarts that pretty much hits the nail on the head... very good post!

this, however:

Just on a point of order here (though I fully appreciate the strength of your feelings.. you should have heard what Steve Reich said to me once about Wagner..), I haven't seen any moderator "watch your language" warnings as a result of this. Perhaps if Mr Rice was Ms Rice and you'd used the word "bitch" we'd have had some.. and I'll bet if someone had written "filthy cowardly Jewish fuck" the sky would have fallen in

it's almost as if there's a difference between swearing in general and insulting someone for their gender or ethnicity????

[mudd]

i'm pretty comfortable with my decision not to intervene in that case. let's not make an issue of it, particularly not in this thread.

m

[Ben_]

Dismissing new rap music due to lack of lyrical content really misses where much of the innovation has been happening in the past 5 years or so.

But surely it's the lyrical content which is inherently important to the genre. If not, then you may as well listen to instrumental beats.

[bryan]

The standout rappers aren't necessarily saying anything different, they are getting creative with phrasing, clever imagery and sheer audacity (cue Waka Flocka). If someone's giving a cursory listen to new rap music the context will be lost. Odd Future doesn't just stand out because they reference Nazis, rape and serial killers... they have an unique and well-developed aesthetic (which yes, does include lyrical content but again, their appeal is not exclusive to this) that extends from the visuals to the beats.

[faster]

But surely it's the lyrical content which is inherently important to the genre. If not, then you may as well listen to instrumental beats.

Yeah, that's why there's never any point in listening to music with vocals in a language you don't understand.

[Ben_]

But surely it's the lyrical content which is inherently important to the genre. If not, then you may as well listen to instrumental beats.

Yeah, that's why there's never any point in listening to music with vocals in a language you don't understand.

Except OF and the other acts mentioned in this thread use a language that IS understandable to us, so i'm not sure how that applies here.

Interesting point made by Simon Reynolds on his blog:
"C.f Big Black, Nick Cave in girl-murder-mode, early TG, Whitearse, et al, there's an argument for the defence that sometimes gets mounted, a variant on Artistic License... the idea is that the Artist is imagining how the world looks like from inside the mind of the psychopath, investigating extremes of human psychology and human experience... But, strangely, them being so imaginative and all, this sort of artist never, ever, seems drawn to imagining how things look from the victim's point of view. It seems to hold no attraction to them. Funny that! I haven't trawled through their corpus (corpse-us?) exhaustively, but I'd be extremely surprised if Odd Future have any lyrics written from the viewpoint of someone being raped/murdered."

[rlrds]

The standout rappers aren't necessarily saying anything different, they are getting creative with phrasing, clever imagery and sheer audacity (cue Waka Flocka)..

So yes let's cue Waka Flocka. He's not saying anything different. He's not saying much at all. And yes we can understand the language he's speaking. But what the hell would Lex Luther's production be without Waka? The vocal phrases/inflections just add one more level to the rest of the instrumentation, if not make it completely.
As somebody else put it "he's angry for a reason"...
and as far as victim viewpoint...how cathartic would that be?? Remember these are just teenagers...energetic extremely creative teenagers....
it's not like John Wayne Gayce dropped a single.
If you don't like rap then don't critique it..

[RFKorp]

But surely it's the lyrical content which is inherently important to the genre. If not, then you may as well listen to instrumental beats.

Yeah, that's why there's never any point in listening to music with vocals in a language you don't understand.

Except OF and the other acts mentioned in this thread use a language that IS understandable to us, so i'm not sure how that applies here.

I listen to a lot of hiphop. I don't really listen to a lot of lyrics. I listen to vocal timbre and inflection and rhythm and how it meshes with or fights against the production. Sometimes on a really special track, this will mean I connect with the literal text too, but not that often. Just because we can all understand the words doesn't mean we're all tuned into them the same way.

[rlrds]

Is this where I provide a link to Z-Ro's Driving me Wild video??