Repeat after me: “ælbərt aɪnstaɪn.”
[Video][Website]
[7.00]
Dan Weiss: Has anyone discussed how retro Odd Future is? They’re such a big deal because they’re bringing a lot of old-guard symbols of Parental Advisory-stickered music – specifically 90s – back to the forefront: upside-down crosses, dozens-deep clans, twitchy Marilyn Manson video shock. Here they revive the doomy squeedle of Snoop’s “Murder Was the Case,” which I’ve lived without since 1993. But I love the (anti)-spirit.
[7]
Brad Shoup: I dunno if we’re out of the woods on the threat-or-menace debate, but this single is a perfect distillation of the Odd Future concept: midnight-movie imagery presented reverently, Left Brain’s plodding shitstomp production (in this case it’s a compliment), that Rorschach-test self-satisfied rape bullshit, and a bunch of ain’t-I-crazy echoes and exclamations. Although picking out clunky punchlines verges on pedantry, these guys clearly take rhyming and wordplay seriously. So while I may say that Hodgy is better than mispronouncing Einstein for a rhyme, know that among MellowHype’s lazy-ass fallbacks, it’s not even in the top five.
[7]
Anthony Easton: I was frightened by this in a disgust-at-the-failures-of-bodies-to-contain-themselves way. Odd Future is like that, though–it’s horribly offensive, and it uses the tropes of racialized fear of its white audiences to make money out of them, and I like the long con of it, but I also think that they write efficiently–that the music sounds like it is degrading, as the bodies are composing, as a fear of both the technology and the flesh failing in ways that Donna Harroway can only have nightmares about. Which means that no matter how genuinely frightened the audience is, it’s a side show game.
[8]
Jonathan Bradley: The kids at the Odd Future show I saw earlier this year responded to the collective with a vicious slam dancing I connect most with the local punk gigs I went to as a teenager. The grim exuberance of MellowHype’s “64” realizes this punk quality to the OF aesthetic; LeftBrain assembles ugly, distorting synths and pounding rhythms while Hodgy Beats’s wheedling, winding verses break into a full-throated roar on the hook. Nasty and misanthropic, he’s a perfect frontman, and, as the video suggests, one with a bellow worthy of a preacher.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Maybe Odd Future inspires so much chatter because we haven’t figured out what to do about early nineties hip-hop, specifically horrorcore acts like Gravediggaz. A buzzier, spacier, more kinetic track gives MellowHype room to flatter us with his knowledge of macabre polysyllables, most of which he twists in poodle shapes that don’t resemble bitches. In short, this young fool loves words and their effects so much he’s not even looking at women.
[7]
Jer Fairall: I already hate trying to force an opinion on a new Odd Future track out of myself for the very reason that I’m very self-conscious about how often I’m possibly–hell, probably, repeating myself, but here goes once again anyway: their buzzy, minimalist underground hip-hop impresses, if only because I’m resigned at how unlikely it is that anything from Anticon will ever brush this close to the mainstream, and as rappers these guys (like Tyler) have an intense, jagged flow, but the persistent shock value of the lyrics continues to reveal their age in ways that are not at all attractive, and I’m ultimately bored by it all as a result. More specifically, though, this is thankfully less whiny than the whole of Goblin but also not as sonically awesome as “Yonkers,” and really nothing terribly memorable beyond a kind-of-funny Mrs. Doubtfire reference.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Even if this were atrocious, “Rasputin, I’m half mutant” would be good for a couple of points at least. But the one-preset horror synth backing is pretty sweet by itself too.
[7]