Distant Relatives: Tomorrow Kings and OFWGKTA
The word around Chicago whispers about those young cats in LA, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, and it supposes that OFWGKTA probably bumped some Chicago tracks on their iPods. Crowd hoppers of the last decade, from Wicker Park to Lakeview, can immediately see the similarities between OFWGKTA and the “Windy City’s” own Tomorrow Kings. Unfortunately, I don’t have the proper info to confirm influence by older Tomorrow Kings on Odd Future, but I do have enough to attribute Chi-pride to this collective of emcees that pioneered a new culture of Hip Hop. After the “video hoe” and “ice” age of Hip Hop, emcees started emerging out of a love for literature; even Jay Electronica drops lyrics like, “Spit that Kurt Vonnegut/That blow yo brain/Kurt Cobain, that Nirvana sh#t.” Sure, cats have been experimenting with rhyme scheme and making allusions to high school classics since the days of Tupac, however the 90’s did not facilitate the complete revolution that we have seen with Tomorrow Kings and OFWGKTA.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK2HmafHn8s
In the beginning of Hip Hop there were simple, yet political narratives: Melle Mel shadowed lives in the ghetto (“The Message”), and later KRS-One gave a parable about materialism through a story about himself (“Love’s Gonna Getcha”). My generation hears the evolution of those narratives. Lamon Manuel, 1/8th of Tomorrow Kings, gets more experimental two decades following the “golden age” with his song “Shit”. Reflecting the style of an emcee that has observed the limits, or lack thereof, reached by literature, Lamon manipulates repelling imagery and abnormal language to draw up something we cannot understand with one listen. “Shit,” without a doubt, is a child of Hip Hop’s storytelling tradition, however, the lyricism depends upon ambiguity and our normative responses to “bad” or “wrong” actions:
this is shit past mourning the corpse pulled from his wrist/ four hundred days malaise craving apathetic bliss/ now the rumor mill’s working like the facts aren’t laughable/ he’s either agoraphobic or a fasting cannibal
Like the difference between “Natural Light” and “Corona,” emcees of this young sub-culture of Hip Hop heighten the aesthetics of the average listener. Fitting perfectly with the generation that’s overqualified for anything, we are starting to judge the quality of verse by how far from the world it can get, while it takes inspiration from something like sh#t. Earl Sweatshirt, 1/11th of OFWGKTA, accomplishes this with one line in the song “Earl”: “how the f@ck I fit an ax into a satchel?” It makes the verse dope because it ridicules the alleged masculinity of satchels by making it incompatible with the normative standard of masculinity, violence. Once again, you could not make sense of the narrative it’s connected to without analysis.
Tomorrow Kings artists (Jyroscope, Skech 185, IL. Subliminal, Malakh EL, Gilead 7, and Lamon Manuel) Typical Cats, Galapagos 4 artists, etc. have been brewing this style that catapults OFWGKTA for years. I say this not to debunk the originality of Odd Future, but to keep an alliance between LA and Chicago in the peripheral. Tomorrow Kings claim that the title of their collective also denotes “a way of life,” a move into the future, perhaps like the coincidental name “odd future”. Oddity here should not provoke fear; instead it should embody a praise of difference. The infamy behind the lyricism—criticism of Tomorrow Kings and OFWGKTA’s violent nature, poetic nonsense, and moral fluidity—will soon deconstruct as the popularity that is to come will inspire us to engage Hip Hop as literature.
correct lyrics – this is shit past mourning the corpse pulled from his wrist/ four hundred days malaise craving apathetic bliss/ now the rumor mill’s working like the facts aren’t laughable/ he’s either agoraphobic or a fasting cannibal
correct lyrics – this is shit past mourning the corpse pulled from his wrist/ four hundred days malaise craving apathetic bliss/ now the rumor mill’s working like the facts aren’t laughable/ he’s either agoraphobic or a fasting cannibal
-Collasoul- Thanks for the mention Sir. We appreciate this. The crew has been
Having this conversation about this subject recently.
-Collasoul- Thanks for the mention Sir. We appreciate this. The crew has been
Having this conversation about this subject recently.
Hip Hop as literature; elaborate please. For example how would engaging hip hop as literature differ from the way we currently relate to it? and how does it differ from the way people relate to other genres of music?
Hip Hop as literature; elaborate please. For example how would engaging hip hop as literature differ from the way we currently relate to it? and how does it differ from the way people relate to other genres of music?
@ Chimene – Hip Hop can be literature when it does more than create party music/pop culture references. It becomes literature when the listener is able to gain insight from the experience of the artist. It becomes literature when it is as interesting lyrically (i.e. on paper) as it is heard out loud on the page. This is especially important nowadays because of the widespread remedial nature of mainstream rap music.
@ Chimene – Hip Hop can be literature when it does more than create party music/pop culture references. It becomes literature when the listener is able to gain insight from the experience of the artist. It becomes literature when it is as interesting lyrically (i.e. on paper) as it is heard out loud on the page. This is especially important nowadays because of the widespread remedial nature of mainstream rap music.
The comparisons between Odd Future and TK are interesting, to say the least. At first listen to their material, I immediately though of an era in Chicago hip-hop history that was full of such extreme imagery and vicious delivery (’98-’03 or ’04). The era that cultivated a facet of the style that I personally and we collectively wield is an antecedent to the sharpest and most apocalyptic of spears we held in our notebooks that were in turn held by our backpacks. For me, Odd Future is the offspring of the progeny of Vakill, Qwazaar, Lord360, SKECH185 (buy his record at http://www.reservedrec.com), Rhetoric Arcane, Rubberroom, Outer Limitz, and the list goes on. Of course I’m not suggesting that OF ingested any of these artists, but it’s probable that they did. And regardless of this, the lines of thought are so close that the logical progression would be from this school of Chicago hip-hop scholarship to Odd Future. For me, Odd Future was not a surprise, but the return of a familiar style that we used to say and that we still say in a form that continues to evolve each time we grab a microphone or move a pencil across paper.
This is a fascinating time to be in hip-hop and to be a human.
Thank you for the mention. We greatly appreciate your thoughtful analysis of our aesthetic.
Gilead7
Tomorrow Kings
“Did you see that KKK ghost jump on the wall/Burn a cross in the niggers’ honor and then haunt us all/I didn’t either, but I did see those Black faces hang on the KMD cover/Hover over Bill Gates Gateway and hang his ass in front of his fucker’s mother”
The comparisons between Odd Future and TK are interesting, to say the least. At first listen to their material, I immediately though of an era in Chicago hip-hop history that was full of such extreme imagery and vicious delivery (’98-’03 or ’04). The era that cultivated a facet of the style that I personally and we collectively wield is an antecedent to the sharpest and most apocalyptic of spears we held in our notebooks that were in turn held by our backpacks. For me, Odd Future is the offspring of the progeny of Vakill, Qwazaar, Lord360, SKECH185 (buy his record at http://www.reservedrec.com), Rhetoric Arcane, Rubberroom, Outer Limitz, and the list goes on. Of course I’m not suggesting that OF ingested any of these artists, but it’s probable that they did. And regardless of this, the lines of thought are so close that the logical progression would be from this school of Chicago hip-hop scholarship to Odd Future. For me, Odd Future was not a surprise, but the return of a familiar style that we used to say and that we still say in a form that continues to evolve each time we grab a microphone or move a pencil across paper.
This is a fascinating time to be in hip-hop and to be a human.
Thank you for the mention. We greatly appreciate your thoughtful analysis of our aesthetic.
Gilead7
Tomorrow Kings
“Did you see that KKK ghost jump on the wall/Burn a cross in the niggers’ honor and then haunt us all/I didn’t either, but I did see those Black faces hang on the KMD cover/Hover over Bill Gates Gateway and hang his ass in front of his fucker’s mother”