"We the niggas you scared of, like bad dentists Flow is anthemic, dirty like it's plants in it Sick, spit a pandemic, crack and Cancer mixed with cannabis To have a bitch, ready to stab a clit with some glass and shit"
The words are disturbing and devoid of any kind of ironic distance or nuance, without context or back story and narrative, they still present a chilling look into what could be the most dangerous generation this planet has ever seen. Those are lyrics from Tyler The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt. If you haven't heard of them, you will, especially Tyler, the twenty-year-old leader of the L.A. hip hop collective(s) "The Wolf Gang" and "Odd Future." Part skate rat, part devil-may-care situationist, his latest video/track, "Yonkers" makes Lady Gaga and Jay-Z's presentation of running the town with little monsters look like Hallmark homilies set to Sesame Street beats. In "Yonkers" Tyler has the sole distinction of eating an enormous cockroach, spitting it up and vomiting, while talking explicitly about raping a woman. NWA used to rhyme about life in the hood. Tyler raps from the persona of a twisted psychopath. There is an enormous amount of danger and taboo in his music, imagery and rhymes. There's also plenty of eye-gripping occult symbolism surrounding him and "Wolf Gang." They wear shirts with upside down crosses on stage. Tyler will occasionally don a green ski mask with the same upside down cross inked between the eyes ala Charlie Manson.
They are dark, occasionally disgusting and dangerous, everything that rock and roll and punk were at one point in time. The difference between Tyler and Johnny Lydon (whom he admires) is that he and the Odd Future collective all range from the age of 17-20 and they are all born with Pluto in Scorpio. They have no trouble at all going over the edge, beyond any kind of propriety, because "they don't give a fuck.."
Last night, it felt like I stepped through the looking glass--a distorted and cracked mirror actually. It was one of those odd Twitter moments, bouncing from one follower to a friend of theirs and so forth. Suddenly, I found myself staring at the punky yet slightly cherubic face of a young woman named. "Kreayshawn." I looked at how many followers she had and peeped over 245,000. Then I saw she was from Oakland and I was really intrigued at this point. Then I went to her website and lo and behold, she's a rapper, a white rapper and she makes no bones about this. In fact she has her own posse called, "The White Girl Mob" comprised of her, Lil' Debbie (The DJ) and a piece of work named "V-Nasty" (more about her later). I watched Kreayshawn's latest video, "Gucci, Gucci, Gucci." The lyrics are outrageously funny. And how can you not like a song with lyrics like, "Gucci, Gucci, Louis, Louis, Fendi, Fendi, Prada, I'm looking like Maddona, but flossin' like Ivana, Trump." Its hilarious and fresh. Think blonde Eminem in B-cups. Its a put on and yet its not. Its not clear whether she's straight or gay and at this point, what does it matter?
Everything is blurred, not with just Kreayshawn and her "White Girl Mob" but this whole emerging scene, where everyone feels like they're the mutant offspring of Sandra Bernhard and Harmony Chorine. Its surreal. I was really taken with this track and then I saw that over 12 million people were also taken with it as well. Hello? This is beyond tipping point numbers. Kreayshawn, Tyler and the Odd Future collective have not only surpassed Gladwell's magical event horizon, they're going to destroy it, mutilate themselves with it, grind it into dust and throw it in a blender with with some "Death Juice" and knock it back. Kreayshawn and Tyler are both nominated for a VMA on MTV. They are about to go as mainstream as Taylor Swift.
I spent about an hour trying to wrap my head around Kreayshawn's VC. She's the daughter of a woman who was in a punk band called, "The Trashwomen" and was raised on the hard streets of East Oakland. She's is legitimately from "The Hood." The rhymes, the knowledge, the attitude are legit. She got herself a scholarship to UC Berkeley to study film and eventually formed "The White Girl Mob." This isn't like any kind of hip hop or urban scene you'd recognize. Kreayshawn talks about "snatching' bitches" and smoking blunts, fronting the same kind of rhetoric that an urban male MC would. There's no distinction.
Lines are blurred, drawn and blurred again. Its clearly bi-racial, maybe bi-sexual, maybe not. There's no seeming demarcation, and no one really seems to care. Young women LOVE Kreayshawn. I spent about twenty minutes scrolling through her comments and there's a lot of devotion being channeled. Kreayshawn seems to have mastered the art of interactivity on Twitter as well, holding court with thousands of followers, although she did drop this decidedly dark Twitter bomb; "k2345h4wN ︻╦╤─ Im the wicked murder the devil has chose." Ahem. Now she may be a Libra, but this is pure, Pluto in Scorpio coming through, dialoging with the underworld. After I had absorbed as much as I could, I stepped through the Odd Future portal, since Odd Future is all over "Gucci, Gucci, Gucci" with an appearance of both "Left Brain" and Tyler. I wasn't prepared for what I was about to take in.
Odd Future is a young collective of uber-talented and precocious kids. At the center is Tyler The Creator, (Taurus). Odd Future is comprised of designers, DJs, cartoonists, producers, rappers and writers. They've been putting out videos and singles for free for the past year, but now they've it the big time and Tyler's "Goblin" is the first full length to blow up. I watched "Yonkers" for the first time last night. Its startling and memorable, very memorable, but not in any sort of inspirational way, more like a bad nightmare with a hangover sort of way.
Tyler strikes the pose of "The Thinker" in silhouette and then he launches into it. The easiest reference point might be the codeine beats and psychotic rhymes of Tricky, but Tyler is more articulate. His words and annunciation are sharp like razors. His gaze, maniacal and penetrating. He toys with a large cockroach, the size of my thumb. Then about a minute in, he pops the cockroach into his mouth and chews it, quickly followed by spit and vomit, but without missing a beat, he's back into the monolog of the rapist. By the end of the track, his eyes are dark and blotted out, looking just a more than a little like Satan's child.
The critics are all over Tyler and Odd Future. They're claiming that this is a moment in time where something significant happens in music. They cite, The Sex Pistols, Nirvana and Public Enemy. They're compared most often to Wu Tang. I'm not sure they're wrong. But the hype and accolades come with caveats. Tyler, Earl and the other members of Wolf Gang use words like, "faggot" and "gay" constantly. They've been labeled "homophobic" Tyler's raps about women are beyond misogynistic. And yet, are they? Is he really venting and spitting his frustration and rage at women or is he channeling darker, collective forces?
As I mentioned earlier they are part of a generation that is firmly entrenched in Pluto in Scorpio. Tyler in interviews says that he writes and rhymes about what we all think about at one time or another; dark thoughts, evil intentions, the id unleashed. There are five words that seem to be a motto for Odd Future and White Girl Mob; "I don't give a fuck." Its clear. They don't. If you're keeping score at home, its likely the same attitude displayed in London, Milwaukee and Philadelphia during the recent flash mobs and riots. We're talking youth that is so disaffected and disconnected that they have a nearly homicidal pact with their own emotions and they're not that concerned about yours.
In Tyler's/Odd Future's breakout piece in the LA Weekly, the one that really put him and Odd Future on the map, he's seen sporting a t-shirt with Crowley on it; "Do As Thou Wilit." Searches for "Is Tyler Illuminati?" are popping up on Google like magic mushrooms. People are hip to the illuminist tip, thanks to countless videos by people like Honor Lenon, breaking down the occult symbolism in videos by Jay-Z, Rhianna and Beyonce. The game is getting exposed. But two things really jump out at me when I look at Tyler through this particular prism. The first being how slick his video for "Yonkers" is. Its simple, but extremely high quality and cutting edge, not at all like their DIY efforts. Lets just say there's money and some real direction behind it. Its the type of video that would make Henry Makow cream. In fact the whole scene would give him one, raging conspiratorial hard on and I haven't even gotten to Cat Stacks or V-Nasty yet (oh man). He would see this as yet another blitzkrieg by the dispossessed foot soldiers of Lucifer himself, lesbian, pot smoking, degrading and debauched. And while I have certainly seen that theme as being very much alive and active, I'm not so sure about this movement is a franchise for the prince of darkness, although there are some striking parallels with Tyler and Robert Johnson, which I will share later.
I think the meme of what I would call, "The Luciferian Agenda" is already well in place, spread and co-mingling with the culture now, in a very transparent way. Its viral. The shadowy spores have spread across the dis-continent, fueled by a never ending series of wars, collapsing economies and a gaping void of leadership. Teens have finely tuned bullshit detectors and with this generation of Pluto in Scorpio kids, they have x-ray vision. They peer deep into the rot and they know the inherent hypocrisy all-too-well.
Tyler and his crew were around ten-years-old when 911 happened. In some ways, whatever innocence they had left was snatched. How would you feel if you were them? Especially if you thought you weren't being told the truth. Would you feel ripped off and manipulated? How would you feel about adults who were supposed to understand these things and stand for something remotely just and right? Even if the subject matter of 911 conspiracy was never broached, somewhere in that deep, dark, collective soul, you'd be pissed . . . really pissed. And where would it come out? And how? You'd see the model of pure, naked, capitalistic grabs for power at work, without any sort of sentimentality. Its like the kid on the corner in the hood watching how gangs go about their business, but on a much bigger scale. You'd say, "Fuck that, I'm going to get me some motherfuckin' money bitch." Yep. And now the meme is spreading. Its becoming something that has enough momentum to perpetuate itself even if Tyler and his crew aren't doing bongloads with Cthulu
These Pluto in Scorpio kids are going to digest every single taboo that older generations have objectified and locked down in the asylum of their consciousness. Its going to get more and more intense as Pluto moves through Capricorn, conjuncting Neptune and Uranus in Capricorn, which they have in their charts. This is extremely powerful as Pluto will deeply transform their concepts of spirituality and their engines of change. This is a generation to be reckoned with and you'd better treat them with some respect. They've got mad numbers. They are the largest generation since the Baby Boom and they are not afraid of much.
Tyler and Odd Future make Lady Gaga sound like "Up With People." They, along with Kreayshawn are carpet bombing the computer speakers and headphones of a generation and guess what? This music isn't for me or likely you. This is their Sex Pistols and that's just fine with Tyler, who despite the accusations of misogyny, homophobia and illuminism lives at home with his mother, still rides his skateboard and doesn't drink or smoke, not even coffee. But just when you think you've figured out the enigma inside of the contradiction, it turns back in on itself again and Tyler's screaming on Twitter for Meth.
When I first looked at Tyler, Robert Johnson popped into my head. It might have been the dead look in the eyes at the beginning of "Yonkers" that mirrors a similar fifty-yard-stare in Johnson's gaze. Or it might have been the psychic analog. But something about Tyler smacked of the man who sold his soul to rock and roll, down by the crossroads. Well guess what? Tyler was born on May 6th. Johnson, May 8th. Tyler and Johnson both have Venus in Gemini, separated by just one degree. They are nearly time twins. They are without a doubt, in my mind, spiritual doppelgangers. Listening to Tyler rant about being on MTV and being a mainstream superstar reveals a deeply ambitious personality, willing to do nearly anything, including eating cockroaches to ensure his fame. But make no mistake, Tyler is no sideshow freak. He's incredibly smart and knows his music. One of his heroes is Ian Curtis of Joy Division. And he loves Roy Ayers. If we follow the cosmic arc of the Pluto in Scorpio generation, their role is to embody and explore the taboo, break every single rule and emerge, through the other side, integrated. They are the embodiment of shadow, the repositories of our complexes and obsessions and they are here to shove them right back into our faces and just when we think we have it and them all figured out, they flip the script and will ultimately be in possession of a truth and psychic wholeness that will be without reproach. Either that or they'll burn the whole fucking place down.
V-NASTY and KAT STACKS
One of the more bizarre back alleys I stumbled upon during this little cyber jaunt was the stories of these two young women. V-Nasty is part of Kreayshawn's "White Girl Mob." Every other word out of her mouth is "fuck" and "n*gga." Her videos range from her viciously rhyming over the same beats about "Barbies" (white women with blonde hair) to getting out of Santa Rita for a six-month-bid. She's made enemies of the old and not-so-old school hip hop guard. And she's going to be a star, mostly on the vapors of Kreayshawn. I have yet to decode anything remotely worthwhile when it comes to anything creative I've seen/heard. There's also something deeply disturbing about her. She's devoid of any ironic distance, which Kreayshawn, to her credit has and she lacks the shocking intellect of Tyler. If Tyler is Johnny Rotten and Earl is Sid Vicious, she's the Nancy Spungeon of this scene. She's also a psychic miscegenation of some socially engineered experiment; a cultural transposition of a black, urban male into a young, white girl. Its shocking and maybe, just maybe that's her point, even if its completely unconscious.
Kat Stacks is part of a groupie sub-culture that goes back to the Plaster Casters. But now, in her world, they're called hip hop hoes. They sleep with rap artists and are not ashamed or guilty of their caste, in fact, Kat Stacks relishes it, like its celebrity and thanks to Youtube, unfortunately, it is. Her angle is sleeping with rappers and then spilling their secrets. Fuck and tell. Its truly sad. She thinks she's busting scenes and telling the truth when in fact she's parasitically leaching off of these young and sometimes not so young guys so that she can gain youtube numbers and then grab the attention of a network like MTV, to get her own show and get paid! Well, she's in jail now. V-Nasty just got out of jail and Earl Sweatshirt, Tyler's partner in rhyme got sent back to Samoa to spend time in a youth rehabilitation center. Even Tyler has been under house arrest. It is Pluto in Scorpio. What did you expect? Tomorrow, I'll profile the reverse polarity of Pluto in Scorpio as I look at Colin Kaepernick, the young and massively talented quarterback for the San Francisco Forty Niners.
