So forgive me if the seven letter acronym threw me off for four years or so, I was busy not getting lost in all of the hype of what was/is Odd Future the group. You see for years, I'd heard about a group of kids defying what hip hop was, I mean the shenanigans and all which they came with was next level and I was like, "Nooooo, there's no way these dudes are jumping off of things, breaking ankles, wrecking rooms, etc."
Well, the letters came rolling into town last month and I decided to ask a friend if I could tag along to see what Tyler The Creator was all about since he is the ringleader of the lot. The best part of the night, other than the show, was getting a chance to meet Eddie Numbskull, a well known promoter in the State of California. Okay back to the show...
Now, I've been to a "few" shows over the course of the years, hundreds of shows in the last seven years, but it has been some time since a crowd was so energized to simply cause organized chaos; I mean, I've seen Kanye ask crowds to make giant circles and then mosh into each other, I've watched mosh pits open up at a Metallica concert, I've watched folks lose their marbles at a Kendrick Lamar show, shoot, I've even watched kids cry at a Wiz Khalifa concert, again it was some time since I've seen 1,700 fans go dummy for two hours straight!
Tyler's DJ came out early and got the crowd pumped with trap track after trap track and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, here springs the man himself, Tyler the Creator. Perhaps it was due to the fact, my ankle is fractured and I'm forced to just sit or perhaps it was due to the fact, it was hot as all get out so I wanted to sit, either way there was an undeniable energy about every movement, comment, or lyric which Tyler shared.
I didn't walk away from this show thinking, this is the best show I've ever seen much like I heard from a few teens, instead my old ass walked away saying to myself, "I get it now, I get it... It's all about the energy" so it's really:
O - Odd
F - Future
W - Wolf
G - Gang
A - Against
T - Them
A - All
Music is so fascinating the things it causes us to do, the feelings it creates in us, and eventually the perspective we create from simply being in the building.