Writing about hip hop in 2011 is to write about Tyler The Creator and his Odd Future/Wolf Gang crew. Both the most exciting and the most divisive band around right now.
Tyler The Creator released Goblin, the best album of the year, a distracting dairy of teenage angst as he rails against the father abandoned him, considers his mother his only friend and retreats from a society where is few pleasures, masturbation and skateboarding, are taken from him. On stage at T5 last month, he was plainly and loudly exhausted from playing nonstop for white America.
He is, of course, the child of Kanye West, another Mama's boy with unresolved Oedipal issues (and a big Tyler fan). Both of them of case studies for Black America: dirt poor, abandoned except for a Mama working three jobs, Tyler has more friends (West is a loner) but both have issues.
Odd Future is Tyler, his posse way in the background, and Frank Ocean, soon to be a superstar r&b star. 2011 wasn't Ocean's year but 2012 will be; it's on its way/. Both of these guys aren't "bad boys", both of these boys are temperamental stars like a Kurt Cobain. And that's Odd Future.
Who also go by the name of Wolf Gang. Odd Future calls itself Wolf gang, but there is two different mindsets. Wolf Gang, on the mellow Hype and the Odd future 12 songs albums, are juvenile delinquents. They have the same Watts is burning tude of Tyler but they don't have the artistic temperament or ability. They are Jungian, an archetypical Wolf pack, actual they are cubs not wolfs, they shout loud but they are insecure and a mess and always in trouble. In some ways, if they were smarter or more malicious, they would be horrible indeed. Wolf Gang are lack the kids in William Golding's "Lord Of The Flies" or the rugrat thieves in Dicken's "Oliver Twist". Policing themselves and on their own, except for a Mom or a Grandma here and there they have zero authority over them: they do what they want to do and it manifests badly,
On stage, Wolf Gang are lively and that's good but without discipline it becomes noise and for all their funning, they need to be not more professional but more disciplined. Rap is a bitch to pull off live, it needs precision, not least in the nuance and flow of the rap. You can't get over excited. You can't just shout them. It becomes mush. But Wolf Gang don't care, they have the morals of the innocent: they don't get it. Jung would love them. He could write a book about them.
And between the two (sort of religious, the two is one) there is nobody uncovering so many layers of subconscious malaise and resonates the way the Sex Pistols (a true descendent) resonates: it is proforma psychological and philosophical unity coinciding perfectly with their fans, who are suffer ring a similar disconnect with the adult world around them: they want to be protected and at the same time they want to lash out.
There is no more important rock and roll band than Odd Future today. They are the voice of a generation.