Friday, August 5, 2011

OFWGKTA in October




Surprisingly and delightedly, I maneuvered my way through the online labyrinth that is the TicketMaster website quickly and adroitly enough to procure tickets for Odd Future's upcoming October show at Terminal 5. My fingers, palms, arms, and shoulders were shaking and quaking as I watched the ominous timer tick at the bottom of my screen, desperately trying to recall a seldom-used Visa verification password. Despite the sweat, success. Professional-ladder climbing in the suburbs has translated to forgoing many musical explorations and shows; with deep, passionate roots seeded at the Ottobar in Baltimore with my lovely older sister Elizabeth, attending and dancing wildly at shows was a favorite pastime for myself, and my social crew, throughout my university years. Hopefully, a new optimistic and positive outlook will allow me to ameliorate my wayward distractions and I can begin enjoying live music more frequently.

Odd Future is currently revolutionizing the texture of the hip hop scene, and the music scene at large, with their strong jazz and electro-techno-pop influences, their provocative and intelligent lyrics, and their precise engineering and sound design. I cannot wait.




(image taken from LA Weekly)

4 comments:

  1. I need to check them out! thanks for sharing:)
    and congrats for your successful mission!

    An Interesting Distraction

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  2. I feel like I'm missing something with the whole Odd Future craze. I really like She but come on, are the lyrics really intelligent? It can't be denied that they're obscene at best. It seems that Tyler the Creator's whole musical theme is based on strong misogyny but because he articulates himself in a poetic way the fact that he talks about raping women in forests becomes ironic? I'm totally willing to have my eyes opened if anyone can explain the fascination!

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  3. there is an obscenity and a misogyny that simultaneously pays homage to traditional hip-hop, to a patriarchial societal tradition at large, and mocks this tradition. although done in a jocular, and seemingly earnest nature, misogyny and treatment of women is critiqued and questioned when such aggressive imagery and lyrics interplay with allusions to kid's cartoons ("adventure time").

    and i feel that the poetics of this expression cannot be written off as an aside; not to draw parallels, but for some perspective, shakespeare wrote about rape of women in a way that was so lyrically opulent, it became beautiful, though was still at times condemned for being obscene (mostly, i am thinking of titus andronicus right now, but it is one of my favorites). i am not sure irony is the ultimate goal, rather an open exchange that such power differentials and dialectics will always exist, inherently, in any sexual relationship. in this case, it is fictionalized, perhaps even fantasy, and should not be read as promotion or propagation. that being said, many consumers are stupid and do not think for themselves; monkey see, monkey do.

    anyway, i love their engineering and their samples, and frank ocean is pretty darn cute and has a great voice. superficial reason.

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