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| Pitchfork |
 A year ago, very few people knew Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. The nihilistic, mostly-teenaged L.A. rap collective has been releasing free mixtapes since 2008, but until recently, they were ignored by most of the rap blogosphere. Full of pathos, humor, and hatred, the group has worked tirelessly to establish their own intricate world online-- from their YouTube account, filled with self-produced videos, to their individual Twitters, Tumblrs, Facebooks, and Formsprings, all of which they update prolifically. To this tight-knit "us," virtually everyone else is a "them," to be mocked, laughed at, and fucked with.Lots of people have been noticing OFWGKTA lately, though, and no wonder: They're new and exciting and divisive and youthful, a magnet for controversy and commentary, and near-perfect think-piece-generating machines-- due in part to the brutality and stomach-turning sexual violence of their raps. At the fore of OFWGKTA's 10-member army is Tyler, the Creator, whose feral stage presence, distinctive growl, and misanthropic lyrics have won the group a legion of obstinate followers. His 2009 debut, Bastard, with its lush, Neptunes-inspired productions and starkly confessional subject matter, is a transgressive, creative burst of anxiety and absurdity. It was one of Odd Future's early catalysts, and along with 16-year-old Earl Sweatshirt's Earl and the OFWGKTA mixtape Radical, it's one of three underground classics in their pocket. While critics have attempted to square Tyler's talent with the frequent mentions of rape and murder in his rhymes (Sean Fennessey wrote a piece for Pitchfork early on, and this blog post by Pitchfork contributor Nitsuh Abebe is also essential), fans have pushed his number of Twitter followers well into six figures. And between he and Hodgy Beats' performance on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" and his outstanding "Yonkers" single and video, the industry noticed, too: Billboard put OFWGKTA on their cover, a major label secured them to a record deal, and Diddy, Kanye, and Jay-Z all showed interest. Odd Future have earned so much attention so quickly that Tyler, the Creator kicks off his second solo release, Goblin, venting to his therapist about fame, message boards, critics, hype, expectations, media scrutiny, and being a role model-- before selling a single album....full text |
| Avclub |
| When Tyler, The Creator threatens suicide, as the gravel-voiced rapper does often on Goblin, his first commercially released album, it’s difficult to tell whether to take him seriously. The 20-year-old leader of the nihilistic Los Angeles rap crew Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, Tyler raps primarily to shock and offend—the countless think pieces he’s incited this year testify to his success on those fronts—but between his sour-humored fantasies of rape and slaughter he hints at honest psychological wounds. When he raps, “Let’s buy guns and kill kids with dads and mom, and nice homes with 401Ks and nice-ass lawns” on “Sandwitches,” he may be expressing real hurt, venting the jealousy of an alienated kid still stinging from the rejection of his absentee father. Or he may just be trying to get a rise, which is certainly the case on “Tron Cat,” where he distastefully snarks, “Rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome.” If there are actual cries for help on Goblin, they’re camouflaged by outlandish vitriol. Even more than Tyler’s 2009 debut Bastard, Goblin has stretches of virtuosic inspiration amid patches of extreme self-indulgence. At 73 minutes, it’s overlong, occasionally repetitious, and sometimes detestably juvenile, yet those excesses do little to detract from the raw talent on display. Tyler is a fierce rapper, rhyming in swells of compounding punch lines, and he’s an equally gifted producer, composing grim, creeping beats with a minimalism that’s part Neptunes, part John Carpenter. His unexpectedly soft touch lends a haunted elegance to laments like “Nightmare” and “Her.” Brash and unwieldy as it seems on the surface, Goblin is a deliberately crafted work of art, one of the densest and most provocative statements that independent rap has produced in years....full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| As the mouthpiece and figurehead of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, the teenage hip-hop outfit that's courted controversy and well-nigh governed the blogosphere for the better part of two years, Tyler the Creator is facing down an especially large degree of expectation surrounding his first major-label release. His self-released and entirely self-produced 2009 album, Bastard, made waves for its shock value, but also boasted some genuinely inspired moments that went some way toward vindicating his crew's cult following. His new album, Goblin, is a much larger platform for Tyler's polemical rants, and it will likely be the mainstream's first taste of the OFWGKTA sound. Goblin is just as disturbed and twisted as Tyler's debut. And, moreover, it's every bit as outrageously brilliant. If you can manage to stomach his debauched musings (the album is marinated in misogyny and bigotry), it's impossible not to be awestruck by Goblin. The material visits some truly dark and troubled places, and Tyler's prose is eerily mesmerizing from start to finish. As with Bastard, Goblin is framed by exchanges of dialogue between Tyler and his fictional therapist, whom Tyler voices himself. This façade works to give the album gravity and context, but one gets the impression that there's more than meets the eye with this illusory relationship. In Goblin's more intimate moments, the 20-year-old prodigy wears his heart on his sleeve and exorcises his demons with unnerving candor. His estranged father is once again the focal point of his most personal tirades: On the title track, he bellows, "Competition missing like that nigger my mom fucked/He still hasn't called me yet…but that's a whole fucking different argument," while on "Nightmare" he sobs, "I'm 6'5", about to fucking cry about another guy." Tyler also discusses the impact of his fast track to superstardom, bemoaning the vacuous nature of life as a celebrity and mourning the loss of his youth. "Nightmare" is arguably Goblin's most honest stream-of-consciousness rant, where a four-minute frenzy against his newfound fame is topped off with "I ain't even killed myself yet, and I already want my life back." Tyler's most reprehensible lines are reserved for the more insouciant tracks, usually when he's detached from the subject matter. "Radicals" stands out for its extreme chorus, in which the rapper exclaims, "Kill people, burn shit, fuck school," in what must surely rank among music's most provocative refrains of all time. And when impersonating Dracula in "Transylvania," Tyler barks a flurry of misogynistic lines that are sure to shock. Many of these lyrics border on unlistenable, even for someone who reveres Kool Keith's horrorcore landmark Dr. Octagonecologyst as one of his favorite hip-hop records, and all of them are categorically unprintable....full text |
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