What Happened To Odd Future?

What Happened To Odd Future?

            by Rhett Rhodes

via Julian Berman on Tumblr

     Odd Future, also known by their acronym OFWGKTA, were no doubt some of the most interesting, talented, and entertaining collective of artists to spring into the music scene well over a decade ago. They were doing things and making moves that no one else had quite seen before. At the time in 2010-2011, it was hard not to sound like every rapper out there but somehow Odd Future were able to heavily distinguish themselves and their respective sounds from literally every rapper in the industry. But much like 88rising, things were quick to change and everything was soon different.

    In 2012 and 2013, it sort of seemed like there was no possible way that Odd Future could ever break up or ever stop recording with one another, so of course it was a bit puzzling to a lot of us fans when time kept going and we saw less and less of the key Odd Future members recording together and less of them in general from the public eye; social media accounts. In this blog post, I'm going to be deep diving into the evolution of Odd Future and giving a detailed report of how and why they all split apart from one another and where they are now.

via TheRinger

    I first started listening to Odd Future back when the OF Tape Vol. 2 came out and Tyler, the Creator's 'Yonkers' music video was randomly in my YouTube sidebar and I decided to check it out. Of course at first, I did not really like it or understand much of it but of course I went back and listened again and clicked on the music video for 'Rella'. To my 14 year old brain, it was wildly entertaining and I ended up going to the much promoted (at the time in 2012) OddFuture.com and downloaded almost all of the MP3 album downloads they had on their website. Of course, now you can't do that anymore which is incredibly sad and OddFuture.com is really nothing more than a website to carry the brand of Odd Future, not the artists anymore. So hop on over to OddFuture.com and I guess buy a shirt or drive to Zumies and you'll see it on the walls and shit.

    Every fan should know this by now, but Odd Future was started sometime in 2007 by Tyler, the Creator, Hodgy Beats, Left Brain, and Jasper Dolphin. That's at least to my knowledge; some fans also say that Matt Martians and Casey Veggies were also there from the inception but I haven't yet found a factual source of that. Of course, Jasper was not even a rapper but was Tyler's only friend in middle school so no doubt he wouldn't leave out his closest friend in the group. At the start, the group focused mostly on music, releasing the 'OF Tape Vol. 1' in November of 2008 on their website as a free MP3 download, and creating a magazine; photography and design. That's right, Odd Future was started as a magazine originally, and here's an old Odd Future WordPress account that shows what the first issue would've looked like from Oct. 2008. It was also written in this article of Billboard magazine from 2011, quote: '...which was first formed as a self-published magazine that seems to have only existed in his mind.'

    Fast forward to 2010, the year Odd Future seemed to have figured things out and knew that at any point in time things could pop off. 2010 was also the year the line-up of musicians was well established as Tyler, Hodgy, Left Brain, Syd (then known as Syd Tha Kyd), Matt Martians, Domo Genesis, Frank Ocean, Mike G, and Earl Sweatshirt. Earl Sweatshirt was the second youngest, next to Syd's brother Taco, and besides Tyler was recognized in a prolific way musically; garnering a large and strong fanbase of his own early in Odd Future's uprise. By late 2010, Tyler had gotten himself and the Odd Future group a manager and this is when things started to take off in all directions. Every member of the group by this point had put out full length mixtapes that were free downloads on their website and blogs were writing about them left and right. October 8th, 2010, Tyler released 'Sandwitches' online and this began something of a new era. Sort of.

via Complex

    Okay, finally moving forward a bit, Odd Future started to slowly lose their artistic creative visions 'together' in late 2014 after Tyler and Earl's last tour together. By 2015, they stopped appearing on each others albums and were all no longer really hanging out with each other. But why? Everything truly seemed incredibly promising. According to Earl in an interview I'll have to find and link on YouTube, he actually got back from Samoa in late 2011 and just barely squeezed onto the OF Tape Vol. 2, which was released in March 2012, on the very last track and posse cut 'Oldie'. Earl wouldn't release his first debut album until August of 2013, which in my opinion was an incredibly smart decision as Earl has always been the type to take his time to make sure his product and content is on-par with himself. 

    Things get foggy on where, why, and how exactly Hodgy Beats came to hating Tyler, the Creator, but as any fan knows, Hodgy dissed Tyler at the 2015 Camp Flog Gnaw concert festival, (Tyler's festival) and things haven't really been okay with them since. As all fans guess, Hodgy hates how big Tyler has become and feels Tyler has left his friends behind. I don't really blame Tyler, because why didn't his friends just stick by his side and keep making songs with him? I'm not sure, but they could have. Domo Genesis was just about the only one besides Syd to actually stay more in touch and try to work with Tyler. As for Jasper and Taco, since they didn't rap or make music, they stuck by Tyler's side for many years. Jasper and Taco even occasionally join Tyler on stage to this day either shouting lyrics with him or DJing for him.

    Tyler of course by 2015 had started the move from his traditional musical sound into different musical territories beyond rap. Maybe this is what stopped Hodgy, Mike G, and anyone else from hitting Tyler up and asking him to feature on one of their songs or something. Who knows, Mike G doesn't seem to carry any hate like Hodgy did. I know Odd Future had a reunion show in 2018 but that seems to have been last we've seen of them all in one room. Crazy... as the years moved for Odd Future, the farther apart they grew. And that leaves us to where we are know with Odd Future. Tyler, still to this day, is the most prominent and prolific figure that remains within the music industry, and Earl Sweatshirt still has always had his prominent fanbase even after he also had an experimental sound change. Syd and Domo Genesis both, although not on as high of a scale, were releasing albums and projects (Syd with her and Matt Martians' band The Internet). Mike G's discography has been pretty weird ever since 2012 and pretty jumbled; meanwhile Hodgy and Left Brain collaborated as MellowHype for many years until January of 2015 when Hodgy announced that MellowHype won't exist anymore. Hodgy has released minimal solo projects since 2015 and has usually remains relatively quiet.