Tuneskis: Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All

A while back my homie Chantz showed me this rap crew called Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA). I’ve been listening to Tyler the Creator’s album “Bastard” a lot as I cruise around the backwoods of West Marin. They are a group from Los Angeles, none of the member are older than 20. Their lyrics are incredibly violent, misogynistic, and homophobic,yet there is an intelligence and emotional rawness to them that has made them one of my favorite new groups.

I think back to when NWA first came out, how they created a huge controversy. How their lyrics brought to life many of the daily challenges, frustrations people in Compton faced. Rap used to be a form of protest music, a provocative way of conveying what was happening to the people who had nothing, no future, no escape

Now look at what rap has come to. What was once subversive, a voice for the degraded and excluded has now been co-opted. Lil’ Wayne and Gucci Mane rap about how they do a lot of drugs, how much money they have, how they can just kill a man with no thought, about being the biggest baddest gangsta. There is Kid Cudi whining about how he smokes too much weed. The jerkin movement in Southern California promoting conspicuous consumption. What’s there to identify with that actually has any weight, any deep meaning? There all in pursuit of something tangible, something material.

What I like about OFWGKTA is that their is a humanity,a rawness to them that many mainstream musicians lack. A perfect example is Tyler the Creator’s “Bastard.” The first song on his album, the song is framed as a discussion between Tyler and a therapist. He’s a smart kid, he writes his own music, takes AP and honor classes, but his intelligence and talents hasn’t gotten him anywhere. His peers make fun of him. Rap blogs like 2dopeboyz won’t post his music because they think he’s a just a kid. Despite his smarts, after highschool he’s going to a jc. He is written off as nothing more than a troubled adolescent black bastard, “an ignorant hood-rat.”

Perhaps I'm being an idealistic upper middle class Mexican white boy, but OFWGKTA's horrifically explicit lyrics bring to light the groups deeper emotional trauma. While there’s absolutely nothing good about things like homophobia and rape, I think the lyrics come out of there the inability to put into words the problems they face. For example, Tyler the Creator is a bastard. Abandoned by his father, without a past to model his future on. He has to live with the knowledge that his dad, his creator, never wanted him. How can that anger, that helplessness, be articulated? I think the lyrics evoke that inexpressible pain. Although it may seem like Tyler’s situation and anger is unique, he notes in “Inglorious“ that he knows he’s not the only bastard. He’s just one of many.

Here is the link to their blog:

http:/www.oddfuture.com/

Listen, make your own opinions, do whatever.

and also

FUCK STEVE HARVEY!

Books: Paradise in Ashes

Here is a response paper I wrote for one of my classes. The book I'm writing about is called "Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope". The book is a about the Guatemalan genocide, and focuses on the experience of Santa María Tzejá.

The campesino’s need for land is what stuck with me in the reading. I thought about identity and (once again) drew connections with struggles happening in my hometown. The need for land, in my mind, is a fundamental part of the individual’s humanity. In terms of the reading, the campesinos in Guatemala are dehumanized beyond belief. They are treated as beasts of burden, as tools. They are in this place because they lack land to support themselves, raise a family, to have a community, to live a dignified life as human beings. Having land gains them what has been denied them and their ancestors for thousands of years. The settlers have a small scrap of land that belongs to them, that they call home. They’ve worked for it, the products of their labor belong to them.

I see a similar struggle in my hometown of Point Reyes. The town has a big agricultural and tourist economy. The base of the labor force on the ranches and farms is made of displaced campesinos primarily from Jalostitlan in Mexico. Many of the workers were originally farmers and had land in Mexico. Thanks to the invisible hand, they’ve lost their land and livelihood and been forced to seek it the U.S. in places like Point Reyes. The work the land, but don’t own it. They live in cramped trailers, some lacking basic utilities like hot water. Although they work in the production of food, many have to take food from the community pantry. They are dehumanized by the way our government's laws and economic system has treated them

Based on my experiences living and volunteering in the community, I’ve seen that these workers want their own farms and ranches. This is denied them not through state violence as in Guatemala, but through economic and political means. Many are undocumented, and live in terror of being ripped from their families simply because they lack papers. Land itself in the town is expensive, as many plots in the town have been purchase by wealthy “weekenders.”

The Guatemalan and Point Reyes campesinos live in different places and face vastly different challenges. However, they both have the same need for land, for recognition and dignity as human beings.