Odd Futurism by Bethlehem Shoals


http://www.poetryfoundation.org/article/241404?id=241404

I've been struggling for a while now with trying to articulate my feelings towards Odd Future -- both in terms of their music and in terms of their cultural meaning. Fortunately, Shoals here has covered every topic I had in mind, as well as addressing numerous ones I am not smart enough to think up independently.

On a side note, it feels appropriate to post this after the recent news that freedarko (an NBA blog founded by Shoals) is shuttering its doors. I had the same feelings reading this article as I do when reading an especially great freedarko post: it's lengthy, dense and cross-references a ton of outside material from different media. The only thing that would make the article more freedarko-esque is a bunch of random photos that seem to make no sense in the context of the writing.

Finally, it is relevant to note that my first introduction to the concept of 'SWAG' comes from this 2007 freedarko post. ("SWAG = competitive style. It's as simple as that.")

-dk

1 comment:

Rian Souleles said...

Hey Dave,

I am saddened to hear about Free Darko shutting down as well, although I feel that blogs like negativedunkalectics.com, which also features literary, dense, and referential posts on the NBA, could fill some of the the void left by freedarko.