Caramanica chimes in on Odd Future and reveals that XL Recordings was behind their recent travels:
Odd Future doesn’t want to remain that way, of course. The industry machine is already in motion: one of the group’s managers is a former Interscope executive, and the other is a current one. The group’s trip to New York, and to London just before (where it also performed), was paid for by the taste-making record label XL, home to Vampire Weekend, Titus Andronicus and more.
He also sums up the perception of their developing image fairly:
That includes psychologically direct songs, which make up a less acknowledged part of Odd Future’s catalog, and also the extreme ones, which aren’t thought-through, intellectually grounded gore, but emotionally pungent slapstick horror.
Those are the ones getting Odd Future in trouble, compounded by Tyler’s Tourette’s-like public persona, which includes a Twitter feed that, taken at face value, is a catalog of depravity and smart-alecky behavior. But really, his outsize statements are calculated, and are likely to evolve under observation.
And notably for me, ’cause I really did picture this, he hints at the possibility of Earl’s absence being a result of bougie disciplinary actions, a potentially incongruous underlying characteristic of the group’s origins, for some people.
A few of Odd Future’s key members didn’t make the trip to New York, including Domo Genesis, who recently released the spacey, dank “Rolling Papers,” and the crew’s best pure rapper, Earl Sweatshirt, who has been absent from public view for the last couple of months.
The group won’t discuss his absence, though the most prominent rumor is that his mother, having heard his music, shipped him off to a restrictive boarding school. Tyler said he speaks with Earl “almost every day.” As for whether Earl is aware of what’s happening with Odd Future, Tyler said, “He knows, but he’s not able to really see it much.”
If anything, OFWGKTA will be an interesting case study on the effects of the accelerating rapidity of that somewhat off-putting yet long-standing symbiotic, media-artist, identity formation circle jerk, to put it as awkwardly as possible.
