Music Bloggers Are Dumb (Odd Future)

If I get behind a band/artist it’s because I feel a connection to their music.  Music as we all know is a very powerful art that can make a listener happy, sad, or feel a range of emotions.  Last night I witnessed a general wave of buzz from music bloggers that could only be defined as hypocritical and disgusting.  Yes, I agree with the majority that the performance below was high energy and entertaining, but as a human, a flashy object doesn’t blind me from seeing the whole picture.

For context sake, here is the performance everyone went nuts for:

But let’s start at the Santo’s Party House in NYC the day before. 

That’s right.  Kill People, Burn Shit, Fuck School.  Also, “I want to slap the fuck out of parents, and all bloggers, and ugly people.”  Well Tyler, we all agree about ugly people, right guys??? But bloggers?  Ok, so we have this rebellious youth who doesn’t give a shit about bloggers…fuck them, right?  If you see one of them you will punch them in the face, right?  Right?

 

Ooooooops.

You had the opportunity to punch the king blogger and you called him “chill”.  I also really enjoyed the fact that the audience in the above video is comprised of %90 Caucasian hipsters who have the money to live in New York and attend shows like that at Santos.  One could only gather that more than half of them have at the very least undergraduate degrees…but still chanting “fuck school”…which is probably more to the point of “fuck school, for putting me into debt with these student loans and then graduating into the real world during a recession”, yeah, that’s what Tyler meant by “fuck school”. 

The paradox in art and culture right now is that smart people are championing dumb people, often times in jest.  In the end, it’s the smart people who are fooled.  Jersey Shore is a hit show and the cast members make millions a season off of smart people watching the show just to make fun of them.  It’s the same trend here with Odd Future.  If you honestly enjoy the music, then good for you, you have every right to do so.  But, is it that hard to break down a few of the illusions and wade through the bullshit to get a better answer?  Odd Future is being handled by the most powerful people in music.  Tyler (the captain of the group) signed a one off deal with XL Records and Pitchfork will write about anything they do…that’s a deadly combination that we’ve seen work before (VW's Contra goes #1). 

The problem I have is how we as music consumers are so easily swayed by buzz.  The most common tweets about the Fallon performance focused on how scary they were, how punk they were, how out of control they were, and how Mos Def repeated SWAG over and over.  We’re talking about a group of youngsters signed to XL, supported by Pitchfork, adored by the white middle class educated youth, who have a youtube channel, tumblr, twitter account, and are relegated to the lowest common denominator of communication (repeating words over and over like SWAG or saying fuck _________).  That’s scary?  That’s punk?  No...it's just dumb.

Maybe it’s just me, but as a music blogger and someone who enjoyed my education, I find the mocking of the things that make me who I am a turn off and not a reason to chant along like a sheep.  The problem isn’t with Odd Future it’s with music bloggers. Odd Future has every right to say what they want and produce the music that they want to make.  It’s up to the music blogger to share with their loyal readers quality music that reflects why the listener choose them as a source for finding music in the first place.  It’s up to the music blogger to spot hypocrisy and not promote it.  I for one view Odd Future in the same vein as ICP.  A group of shock and awe musicians whose content when analyzed if nothing more than ridiculous for the sake of being ridiculous.  ICP puts on a pretty fucked up, high energy, insane show…why don’t you blog about them? 

It’s not about how crazy an artist can be or the image they create of themselves.  It’s about the music and nothing else.  The music of Odd Future plays like a disgruntled middle school kid who throws out as many shocking phrases to get attention.  The use of rape, Nazi imagery, and violence based lyrics by Odd Future is no different or more artistic than the bands/rap groups bloggers make fun of and would never write about.  Yet, last night Odd Future was the talk of the indie music bloggers…why?…because it was the thing to talk about and nothing else.  The buzz was sweet and people were hungry.  Do your readers a favor and don’t push shit down their throats because it’s simply there.  I’m turned off of the whole blogging world at the moment and where I go from here I don’t know.  I do know that if I continue with this site you’ll never see me support music that completely contradicts who I am and what I stand for.