Three 65, Day 31
Tyler, The Creator, Goblin

A couple of days ago, I referenced a crew of skate kids from Los Angeles who were about to take the rap world by storm. For those of you who didn't click on the link, they are Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, a loose collective of like-minded ne'er-do-wells from California whose oeuvre is kind of like that of the Wu-Tang Clan... if every member was Eminem.

Their leader is Tyler, The Creator (the comma is deliberate), and he's just released the first album in the Odd Future collective that you actually have to pay for - all of the rest are available as free downloads from Odd Future's Web site. Entitled Goblin, it's a bracing listen from beginning to end. Just don't call it "horrorcore."

Actually, you could call it "horrorcore." It reminds me of nothing so much as an angrier version of Kool Keith's Dr. Octagon project, minus the sci-fi references and classy production. Tyler himself has grappled with the term "horrorcore," and on this album, he casually dismisses any attempt to fit his music into a box, but the term is apt. Any album whose high point is a line about raping a pregnant woman and calling it a threesome is horrorcore, by my standards. Calling it anything but is tantamount to referring to Slayer as "fast blues."

Built as a dialogue between Tyler and his therapist (actually Tyler, with his voice distorted), Goblin weaves its way through canyons of itchy synthesizers and brittle beats as the husky-voiced Odd Future shaman spits all kinds of vitriol at the mic. Lead single "Yonkers" finds him targeting Bruno Mars and Pitchfork.com, "Transylvania" is a song from the POV of a very pissed off Dracula, and "Tron Cat" is just obscene to the max. Elsewhere, Tyler and fellow Odd Future cohort Frank Ocean cover the peeping tom routine on "She," and the group aesthetic comes to the forefront on the banging "Sandwitches."

For all of this filth, there are moments of genuine, head-scratching normality. "Nightmare" is about the perils of fame (I can't relate), "She" is a very adult song about liking a girl - especially in this context - and "Analog" is a number about hanging out with a girl by the lake. You keep waiting for the other shoe to drop on "Analog," and it just doesn't, which is eerier than anything disgusting Tyler could dish up.

Finally, there's the instrumental "AU79," which makes about as much sense on this album as a speed metal solo during a Beethoven symphony. But it shows growth, and potential - Tyler isn't going to be a kid forever, but he's going to be a member of the hip-hop community for, hopefully, quite some time.