Odd Future
The OF Tape, Vol. 2
Release Date: Mar 20, 2012
Genre(s): Rap, Alternative Rap, Underground Rap, Hardcore Rap
Record label: Columbia
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Album Review: The OF Tape, Vol. 2 by Odd Future
Very Good, Based on 15 Critics
Based on rating 5/5
Here's the thing about the L.A. rap collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, hip-hop's preeminent self-styled radicals, provocateurs, and shock-artists: They're not radical, they're not provocative, and they're not shocking. Free-floating male hormonal rage, Odd Future's stock-in-trade, has been an engine of pop music for more than half a century.
Based on rating 8.4/10
Patron Saints for the Misunderstood?Most controversial rap group since N.W.A. drops challenging new album Disturbing. Hilarious. Vapid. Thought-provoking. Misogynistic. Empathetic. Odd Future is all of this at once; the hip-hop version of Kris Kristofferson’s pilgrim—a walking contradiction ….
Based on rating 78%%
Odd FutureThe OF Tape Vol. 2[Odd Future; 2012]By Craig Jenkins; March 26, 2012Purchase at: Insound (Vinyl) | Amazon (MP3 & CD) | iTunes | MOGHodgy, Domo Genesis And Tyler, The Creator - "Rella" I am constantly in awe of just how big the blogosphere actually is. Our attention is perpetually divided among a myriad of varying interests, so much so that it’s only during major musical events that we all zero in on the same subject, our trillions of voices shouting all at once.
Based on rating 7.5/10
"Rella" video: Hodgy Beats shoots lasers from his crotch that turn girls into cats, Domo Genesis smacks a black girl in the face and she turns Asian, Tyler as a coke-snorting centaur. "NY (Ned Flander)" video: Hodgy as a deadbeat dad preoccupied with softcore porn, Tyler's head on a baby's body. If you thought that one-two punch of videos for the lead singles from The OF Tape Vol.
Based on rating 7/10
Odd Future :: The OF Tape Vol. 2Odd Future/RED DistributionAuthor: Steve 'Flash' JuonTyler, the Creator and his large rap collective known as Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (or simply Odd Future for short) seem to have virtually taken over the hip-hop landscape in the last twelve months. This has caused confusion, consternation or admiration depending on what part of the hip-hop audience you consider yourself in.
Based on rating 7/10
You probably know Odd Future by now. They’re the L.A.-based hip-hop collective your grandparents would be horrified by if they ever went on the internet. They’re the demon spawn of the Wu-Tang Clan and pre-Encore Eminem, an impossibly talented group of kids in their late teens and early twenties who live by the philosophy of just not giving a fuck.
Based on rating 7/10
As of early 2012, while The OF Tape, Vol. 2 was seeing release, the wild hip-hop collective called Odd Future had significantly "got real" twice in their career, once with Frank Ocean's rather traditional mixtape Nostalgia and once with the Internet's debut album Purple Naked Ladies. The first one was a home run by mixtape standards, although Ocean's compelling voice was "in demand" and an "easy sell", while the more subtle Internet album stiffed like Tyler, the Creator watching a porno.
Based on rating 3.5/5
Like the poetry it so sought to be, conscious rap is dying. And like poetry — what was once an art of preserving a knowing of the power of language for those who retain it (be they monarchs, CEOs, etc.), and of writing for the future as did Harlem Renaissance and South African apartheid poets (cough Earl’s father cough) in penning the seeing-past-race lexicon of the New Negro — rap has devolved into a fetish for craft and given piece’s font downloaded for the feeling it looks, for well-metered lines not really saying anything about anything more than, well, just kinda how the rapper feels. Insular, with all energies bound inward.
Based on rating B-
When this Cali crew first blazed onto the scene in 2011, they straddled the line between scary public enemy and media darling. Their latest suggests they’ve chosen a side — or at least it’s chosen them. ”Still suicidal,” the group’s ? de facto leader Tyler, the Creator raps, ”but some assume that I’m cool now/Because I got a f—ing award in my room now.” Robbed of their outsider status, the ? boys swap horror for hormones on The OF Tape, Vol 2., giddily trading tall tales and witty obscenities.
Based on rating 2.5/5
You should skip to the final track on Odd Future’s The OF Tape Vol. 2 to reach the project’s climax. That moment, of course, is Earl Sweatshirt’s rhyming return to the collective Odd Future fold on “Oldie,” he cracks the hazy, hypnotic beat shortly after the seven minute mark, and blesses it with a subdued but intelligent performance. Lately, the hullabaloo about Earl’s return has dwarfed the Odd Future hype machine, and Earl’s shadow has cast doubt on the appeal of Tyler, the Creator’s tykes now that their persona of menace has been blunted.
Based on rating C-
“We Were Just Some Bad Kids With Talent Who Loved Making Shit, As You Can Tell From The Shitty Quality Of The Songs. ” So reads Odd Future’s description of the first Odd Future Tape, self-released by the California-based rap provocateurs in 2008. When that mixtape came out, no thinkpieces had been written about the group yet, and ringleader Tyler, the Creator was an eon from “Yonkers” and winning a VMA for Best New Artist; in fact, the now-11-deep collective was struggling just to be featured on blogs.
Based on rating 4/10
A portrait of male pubescence in grotesque free-fall. A junk-art mirror-image of the sickness festering in the future of society. Larry Clarke's 11 apostles. Music's last punk band. Now, no more. We're in the realms of novelty as of OF Tape Vol 2, with the novelty in scant supply. In the field of ….
Opinion: Excellent
Fans who pick up Odd Future's new release, The OF Tape Vol. 2, looking for more of the scatological violence and general misanthropy that filled Tyler, the Creator and Earl Sweatshirt's solo work won't be disappointed. Songs like "NY (Ned Flanders)," "50" and "Rella" are as gnarly as anything on Goblin or Earl. What may surprise fans who aren't familiar with OF's already vast library of solo material is what else is on the album.
Opinion: Very Good
‘Post-fame’ follow-up to notorious rap crew’s 2008 online-only debut. Paul Lester 2012 This is being trumpeted as Odd Future’s first release ‘proper’, and certainly it’s their first since achieving global notoriety at the start of last year, roughly around the time mainman Tyler, the Creator made a startling black-and-white video to go with his single Yonkers. But this is by no means their debut: there have been upwards of a dozen free-to-download albums released over the last few years, many of them ranking with the best music made in the name of hip hop, particularly Tyler’s Bastard and Earl by the group’s totemic 11th member, Earl Sweatshirt.
Opinion: Fairly Good
Though it has been a year since they catapulted to hip-hop’s limelight, the entire Odd Future gang haven’t appeared together musically on wax much during that span. In October, they put 12 Odd Future Songs, a follow up to 2010’s Radical, on iTunes, but the majority of the songs had been previously released. Now, fresh off of Earl Sweatshirt’s return home, the California collective is back with The OF Tape, Vol.
'The OF Tape, Vol. 2'
is available now