Performing live on BBC Radio 1, Odd Future‘s Tyler The Creator and Hodgy Beats delivered a heavily censored version of their song Sandwitches from Tyler’s second album Goblin, out now on Remote Control.
With Sara Quinn of Tegan & Sara speaking out against their music, rumours of collaborations swirling, Earl Sweatshirt speaking out against the Free Earl campaign not to mention continuing controversy surrounding riots at Tyler The Creator’s album signings, the rapper even getting arrested at a promotional event, you’d think you’d be done with Odd Future news for the week, but you’d be wrong. Hell it’s only Tuesday, the shit is only getting underway. The media narrative has begun and there is no stopping it, so here’s my latest attempt at keeping the fire burning a little longer.
The video posted up on Odd Future’s tumblr, seems to show the two rappers pretty much taking the piss out of Sandwitches, the song that shot them to fame when they performed it on Late Night with Jimmy Falllon earlier this year, with almost every offensive lyric, from the rather offensive, expletive strewn song, removed. For the group who’s reputation is pretty much built on their do what the fuck you want attitude and punk hip hop image, not to mention their uncanny ability to get people talking about them, you’d think such a move would be the last thing they’d do.
The rappers hardly seem to be their usual onstage selves performing in a vacant studio, awkwardly dancing about. Hodgy’s verse, missing most of the lyrics as it is, seems to tip their hat a little, certain phrases such as ‘mess with me and I’ll scratch your cat’ just sounding too stupid to be serious, and he even alludes to the censorship at the beginning of another performance from the same session, said video featuring some tight ass back-up dancing from Left Brain and Tyler.
In all honesty, with the amount of media hype surrounding them, they could probably do an album with Celine Dion and still get smoke blown up their ass by every music media outlet (did you see the fucking New Yorker printed Earl’s message speaking out against the Free Earl campaign) while selling millions of albums, so who really cares. Well I do, as it’s sad to see a group of musicians who once seemed so determined to avoid the bullshit of the music industry sucked into what was a media opportunity they really didn’t need to be involved with, and compromising their ideals somewhat in the process. I don’t want to sound naive, like I didn’t expect this, but it’s still sort of sad to see it happen.
