Odd Future’s most alluring aspect, which has secured their legacy, was how they made their internal dynamic part of the product in ways that only modern technology could allow. But another part of it may be that, like any teenage friend group, distance has taken a toll. Part of that may be because of how badly some of the songs on The OF Tape Vol. They and everyone else, regardless of the level of success they managed to achieve since seem overall hesitant to revisit the material. The common thread between these people is that they eventually transcended the group’s juvenescent limitations. Earl Sweatshirt, meanwhile, grew up the rough, rancorous version of horrorcore he spat at 16 he’s now refined across a slew of fantastic albums bridging the gaps between the mainstream and the underground. Frank Ocean grew up, came out, and changed R&B forever. Tyler, the Creator grew up, came out, and blossomed into a flower boy. But they likely will have heard of some of the artists that once comprised the group. Nowadays, ask the average adult American, and they likely won’t recall Odd Future, even though the national hand-wringing over the blatant misogyny and homophobia embedded in their music did bring them to momentary infamy in the early 2010s. The easy camaraderie of group friendship also gets more difficult as that same maturity draws you towards committed relationships and family building, coinciding with the fading novelty of random sex.
Gleeful offensiveness only works if you’re internally shielded from the consequences of your words, and that’s harder to do as your sense of empathy matures. Similarly, the ideas on which they raged were just as destined for ephemerality. You can’t carry the energy they demonstrated at their peak, raging en masse at self-curated festivals and buoyed by seas of moshing teenagers, even into your late 20s. Like every punk group before them, Odd Future weren’t built to last. Even those of us lucky enough to experience the highlights of adolescence still live tumultuous temporary existences, likely without the self-awareness necessary to appreciate just how fast those moments may pass. The emphasis, however, rests on “romanticize”. So many of music’s most enduring moments come from people sustained by gifts endowed from young adulthood: namely, a nascent sense of agency and the fickle, irrepressible life force that drives it. In the music world, it’s one significant reason why we romanticize youth. The one assuagement for the torture of adolescence is often what makes the art associated with it so beautiful it doesn’t last forever.
Over a decade after Odd Future permanently altered the rap landscape, the group’s debut album/mixtape has mostly aged poorly even as it captures an impossible crossroads between creativity and youthful abandon.
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