You can chant and chant and chant again, but Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All will come on stage not when you tell them to, but when they feel like it. Boulder learned this the hard way.
Odd Future fans line up in front of the Fox Theatre before Sunday night's sold-out concert. The group made the audience wait 45 minutes before coming out to make sure that they were riled up enough. (CU Independent/James Bradbury)
The crowd for the sold-out show on Sunday at the Fox Theatre tried chanting several variations of Odd Future’s name, including “Wolf Gang” and “Golf Wang,” to encourage the group to come out and perform. But they kept us waiting and waiting and waiting. It’s no surprise that the hip hop collective started their set 45 minutes late; in their own words, they “don’t give a shit.”
Odd Future has been known to make their audience work for their sets. They won’t waste their time onstage if the audience doesn’t act like they want to see the group. If you’re in the audience at an Odd Future show, you better get riled up. By 9:45 p.m., the audience finally reached that point. Boulder was ready for Odd Future, and they were ready for us.
The show started with a five-minute clip of the collective’s Adult Swim show, “Loiter Squad,” premiering March 25. The sketch show looks like a ghetto-version of “Wonder Showzen”; some sketches include “Blackass,” like “Jackass”; “Maurice,” a take on Maury Povich-like talk shows; and “Po-Po,” an African-American version of “Cops.” The humor is crass and borderline disgusting, but the audience, including myself, loved it nonetheless.
Had I not looked at the Odd Future website after the show to see what other projects the group has coming out, I would have thought they were only on tour to promote “Loiter Squad.” They only mentioned their newest album once in the whole show. In fact, the collective will drop their newest compilation, “The OF Tape Vol. 2,” on March 20. Mike G also recently dropped his album “Gold,” and Domo Genesis released his latest mixtape, “Under the Influence,” in late 2011. Even with all their new projects, Odd Future stuck to their old material all night.
Tyler, the Creator of the rap collective Odd Future performs Sunday night at the Fox Theatre. (CU Independent/James Bradbury)
Even with the near-constant stream of projects released, Odd Future isn’t a group that shamelessly self-promotes. They would rather screw around and have a good time, which is exactly what they did when they finally came out to perform.
There was a short lull in the show as the crew set up the stage after the “Loiter Squad” promo. After a few minutes, the real show finally started. Tyler, the Creator, the leader of the Wolf pack, started the set as his alter ego, “DJ Spank Daddy,” as the other members of the group walked onstage. Although Odd Future was joking around through most of the set, you could tell they meant business, at least about their music. They may have been high and drunk, but they were there to put on a damn good show.
The show wasn’t broken up into sets, which was new to me. I’ve never been to a show where all the separate acts were onstage at the same time. But in Odd Future’s case, it was the only way for the show to be. There are no headliners or frontmen in the collective, so it would have been awkward to break everyone up into their own sets. Since the members all collaborate with each other, this would have been even more bizarre. Although the strange on-and-offstage dance that would have occurred would have been hilarious, the show would not have flowed as well as it did. They also messed around throughout the set, which wouldn’t have happened if each member had his own set.
Throughout the set, the crowd was rowdy. The front section of the floor often looked like an ocean of bodies swaying to the beat, while spontaneous mosh pits broke out in the back floor section. When Left Brain asked for a light for his blunt, seven people threw their lighters at him. Several times throughout the set, members of the Odd Future crew would run from off stage and do somersaults into the audience. Things got really crazy when the group played their well-known tracks like “Yonkers” and “King.” Audience members would thrash and jump about. This was slightly terrifying, until I realized that the only way to not get hurt was to do the exact same thing. I may have looked crazy, but so did everyone else.
(Courtesy of Lyndie Raymond)
Odd Future finished their set with “Kill People, Burn Shit, Fuck School,” an ironic ending to a college-town show. One by one, Odd Future members walked offstage, until Tyler was the last shirtless, angry man on stage shouting, “Wolf Gang!” After a few repetitions, he left the stage to cheers from the audience. The crowd had one measly attempt at a chant for an encore. But as I said before, you gotta want Odd Future for them to want you.
I guess they didn’t give a shit about giving Boulder an encore.
Contact CU Independent Entertainment Editor Avalon Jacka at Avalon.jacka@colorado.edu.
