"Yu"-MellowHigh

New single "Yu" by Odd Future enclave MellowHigh is the definition of effervescent. A looping piano part is constantly turning figure 8's, while a blunted drum beat remains animated throughout the track. Domo Genesis delivers a bubbly hook smoking until his "eyes bleed". Clouds of smoke coat Domo's cursory verse, however he pushes past to "kick knowledge" and "make the most of what this bulls*** world allotted us." It's a clear role reversal from the bluster of "Look", sparking lighters instead of starting beef. Hodgy continues as his typical cocksure self. In Hodgy's mind the hip-hop community is caught in his gravitational pull though the occasional piece of paranoia still enters his orbit. Gun-talk emerges in the chestpuffing bridge but Hodgy delivers it with the calm of a captain. "Decision making reliably, taking over society", he encapsulates. It's a breezy takeover that stays under the three-minute mark.

MellowHigh's self-titled debut LP is out October 31.

        

"Look"- Tyler the Creator, Hodgy Beats, Domo Genesis, & Earl Sweatshirt

"Look" announces itself in "typical" Odd Future fashion, Tyler delivering "it's the f****ng aaahhh" in his guttural yell before the beat screeches to a halt and he sarcastically promises to "tone it down". The screen comes down and the initial scene has been broadcast before. Tyler's "pissing inside your swimming pool", rocking paint jobs "flatter than Miley Cyrus' ass", and moonlighting as "the blackface of white America". Hodgy Beats doubles down on the oddly familiar over the precise drum strikes, copping to being "mentally crowded" and "spilling more than I drink". 

Then Domo Genesis enters the arena and the reset button may as well be hit for a second time. Since his Under the Influence release, I've been fervently insisting Domo is on a steady ascension to the upper echelon in the OF crew and "Look" continues the climb. Domo's long been pigeonholed as the resident "weed rapper", but here he's surprisingly sober rattling off the opener "live from the gutter, young stunner, trumps what you n****s blundered, I uppercut by the bundle, n**** take a number," with devastating dexterity. He's out for blood and Earl's lusting for it in the finale. Earl's unnerving calm disappears in the fog of the glitchy backbeat as he opts to "chalk out n****s". The minor details of a Sweatshirt verse continue to deliver major damage, in this case the close-up image of his "thumb sticking to that pump grip". "Sticking to the script" is a misnomer; they're rewriting their own mythology one page at a time.

The debut MellowHigh album (Hodgy, Domo, and Left Brain) is being teased for a Halloween release, no word yet if "Look" will make the final cut.

  

 I'm 'bout my butter, never let them suckers te me under  

"NY (Ned Flander)"

Just when you thought Odd Future couldn't get any darker in their videos, they go and drop "NY (Ned Flander)." The whole thing is a carry-over from the "Rella"video with Hodgy again playing a lecherous old man popping pills and glued to the TV. His verse is preemo Hodgy, sputtering lines with stupefying effortlessness. A minor-key piano underscores the track and is a step away from unleashing Michael Myers. Tyler gets infantile and is completely repulsive. Sitting in a high-chair, eyes bulging and teeth a sickly green, Tyler name-checks Jerry Sandusky and is left-stranded in a putrid bath-tube. The whole video is less than three minutes, but when you're trapped in a nightmare time always seems to stand still.

"Rella"- Hodgy Beats, Domo Genesis, & Tyler, the Creator

That's the artwork for Odd Future's first single from their forthcoming O.F. Tape 2. They'd been promising the "Rella" video to drop for a minute now and we have it. It's a far cry from the dark-lunacy that informed "Yonkers" and "64". Here we have Hodgy, Domo, and Tyler sticking to the madcap laughs that encircled "B**ch S**k D**k". In the visuals we see Hodgy in astro-gear, Domo looking like Boyz N' The Hood meets Scooby Doo, and Tyler doing Montana mounds of coke and playing cross-dressing centaur. The beat is Left Brain at his best, with a bubbly synth starting off and slowly descending into plodding darkness. Karate drum kicks spar with the synth and wind up subsumed by the darkness. It's a disturbingly-catchy affair, where you can't help but nod along, even if you know its wrong.