For those of you that have not been in the loop the past few months, you will have missed Tyler, The Creator and his rap collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All blowing up the internet harder than Osama Bin Laden. With Tyler’s first single off Goblin, ‘Yonkers’, reaching over 7 and a half million views in just Two months and a performance on The Jimmy Fallon Show, the hype was certainly there. When I first heard OFWGKTA I fell in love, the beats, the lyrics and the anarchy of it all made me wonder if we have this generations Nirvana or Sex Pistols on our hands. Now they aren’t a punk band but their shows certainly are with the band often stage diving, climbing up things and diving off them into the baying crowd, Are OFWGKTA the ones to save hiphop?
Album opener ‘Goblin’ kicks off right where Bastard ended (Tyler, The Creators debut album, go download it if you haven’t listened to it yet you can get it from their website for free) with Tyler’s conscience Dr. TC antagonizing Tyler until he snaps ‘I’m not a fucking role model’ he raps over a dark, moody beat, you start to get this feeling this is going to be a deeper and darker venture into Tyler then Bastard was.
‘Yonkers’ was the track that started off the buzz for this album with the insanely addictive beat and possibly one of the videos of the year, everyone knows the words to this track. Tyler decides to get his revenge on ex Odd Future member BrandUn Deshay as well as rapping about ‘stabbing any blogging faggot hipster with a pitchfork’ on the extended verse that those that hadn’t bought the itunes version wouldn’t have heard.
‘Hey don’t do anything that I say in this song, ok?! It’s fucking fiction; if anything happens don’t fucking blame me white America, fuck Bill o’Reilly! 4,3,2,1’ and with that ‘Radicals’ is born; 7 minutes of madness which is sure to be a highlight of an Odd Future show with everyone chanting along to ‘Kill people, burn shit, fuck school!’
Tyler’s first and probably only love song, ‘She’ features ladies favourite Frank Ocean who helps slow things down amongst all the chaos of Goblin. With lyrics about being watched through windows and female masturbation the song is 4 minutes of sleazy, dreamy, radio friendly rap which is to be the next single off the album.
Goblin goes back to the deep and the dark in ‘Tron Cat’ although you could be mistaken with the sweet ‘la la la’ intro, which descends into 4 minutes of heavy raps such as ‘Rape a pregnant bitch n’ tell my friends I had a threesome. You got a fucking deathwish I’m a genie, it’ll get done.’ It’s clear that Tyler doesn’t care about scaring white America.
‘Sandwitches’ is another track that most of the people hyping this album have heard after a thunderous version of the song was performed on The Jimmy Fallon Show with legendary Hiphop/Soul band The Roots acting as a backing band. With an added intro, which is kind of cheesy but also gets you pumped for the drop, the rest is the same 4:51 minutes of magic.
Analog kicks in with a ‘Mellowhype’ ambient summer like beat with Tyler, The Creator and Hodgy Beats taking it in turns in asking a female to meet them by the lake where they can do such as ‘watch the sun set’ surely Tyler isn’t going soft on us?!
In short…’No, Bitch Suck Dick’ – Goblins version of Bastard‘s ‘Tina’ has a Waka Flocka feel to it with the ‘Bow bow bow!’ this song captures Odd Future’s energy and is sure to be another one to go down well live.
Goblin finishes with Golden and Dr. TC again winding up Tyler as the two go at it with a Gospel choir in the background and a hypnotic beat the song escalates and escalates until Tyler loses it and raps over 4 minutes of solid gold.
As the album ends we are left with a cliffhanger, and with Tyler saying that follow up album Wolf (his best work with his favourite beats) already done you are left with the idea that Tyler, The Creator and his rap crew Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All are infact way ahead of the hiphop game.
Words by Aaron Lewins
Goblin is released on the 10th May on XL Recordings
