By embracing vulnerability at a time when all the old rules about the genre were breaking down, the LA collective broadened what it could beThe decade in music: read the rest of the essaysLast year, the three most streamed artists across the globe on Spotify were all North
American rappers –
Drake, Post Malone and XXXTentacion – the culmination of a decade in which rap became the world’s dominant pop music. It’s a genre now so wide and plural that sweeping statements about it become nonsensical, and so many figures in the last decade have helped move it to its current place in the firmament: the DIY spirit and uncontained impulses of Lil B; the monolithic repetitive one-bar melodies of Chief Keef; Nicki Minaj’s weaponising of drama and persona. The scene’s biggest star, Drake, is interestingly both highly influential and heavily influenced.
But one rap collective is a case study in how the genre flourished, expanded and culturally dominated this decade, and also functions as a Seven Up-type social experiment in seeing people grow in real time. Odd Future – or Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All to give their full name – emerged as teenagers from
Los Angeles in 2008, in a hail of encrusted tube socks and profanity. After a flurry of group mixtapes, its members grew up and amicably became independent of one another, just as groups of teenagers are wont to do. Various artists from their number would go on to release some of the best rap, funk and R&B
music of the period – Frank Ocean, Tyler the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt, Syd – and others, such as Domo Genesis and MellowHype, put out future cult classics. Normalised to the always-on broadcasting of social media and the droll surrealism of meme culture, they carved out new space for rap, becoming the bards of the confessional impulse that gripped our culture from
Twitter to reality TV.