For somebody who appears to give as little a fuck as he does, Odd Future head-honcho Tyler the Creator sure gets his Santorum-stained panties in a twist at the mention of “horrorcore.” At the end of the Hodgy Beats-assisted “Sandwitches,” the 20-year-old Los Angeles emcee and producer makes sure to drop the beat out before telling his critics that Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All doesn’t “fucking make horrorcore, you fucking idiots/Listen deeper than the music before you put it in a box.” It’s a funny thing to get mad at, if only because no one makes horrorcore at all and certainly no one with 8 million YouTube views for a debut single. The hip-hop subgenre was made up by The RZA and Prince Paul when they collaborated as Tha Gravediggaz, and that album’s biggest hit “Diary of a Madman” has 1/10th the views that Tyler’s “Yonkers” flick does. Horrorcore didn’t matter until Tyler got all pissed about it.

So what’s with all the horrorcore hullabaloo then? It’s because Tyler the Creator’s second full-length, Goblin, is dark as shit. Like rape and incest and serial killer dark. It’s in the mostly minimalist production and it’s definitely in Tyler’s voice. There’s no way that a Southern Californian born in the ’90s should have a voice so hardened, and yet Tyler’s pipes perfectly embody the demons he creates. From “the type of shit that makes Chris Brown want to kick a whore” to “a game of duck duck duct-tape with a dead goose” to “rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome,” the darkness is fully represented—and these examples are only from a single verse found on “Tron Cat.” The content rarely strays outside of shock-value, but Tyler The Creator is most shocking when he does venture beyond his comfort zone of diarrhea and discomfort.

Goblin’s “love songs” are “She” featuring Frank Ocean and “Her”—but probably not “Bitch Suck Dick”—and they showcase Tyler at two different relationship vantage points. While the former vainly attempts to straddle the lines he’s pissed all over by track #4 (”I finally got the courage to ask you on a date/So just say ‘Yes’ and let the future fall into place/Cunt!“), it’s “Her” that allows Tyler to be a human and not just the horse-throated Satan he so well personifies. When he says “video chats are so exciting because it’s like she’s inviting me into her world full of privacy,” Tyler isn’t just examining a YouPorn-worthy fantasy, but allowing his own intimacy and vulnerability to show up over the metronome. The rare look inside might stir up questions about why there isn’t more, why Tyler doesn’t drop the demon the persona more often, but that isn’t its purpose. Tracks like “She” and “Her” and assorted moments of genuine introspection exist as a concrete foundation for the controversial jokes about raping and pillaging and all the words that kids have long been taught they shouldn’t say.

The real question is how has Tyler The Creator and his Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All crew gotten so popular? The disbelief isn’t because it’s bad, but because dark and difficult doesn’t go pop. Definitive Jux artists never had the cover of Billboard, true metal has always been maligned to the basement, Necro’s catalogue is as popular as the necrophilia he references, and yet Tyler’s OFWGKTA is indeed killing them all. Perhaps something can be said of the Internet movement Tyler spearheaded, but even that leaves little in way of explanation. Even the most clever and comprehensive online marketing campaign too often falls flat, and yet, the binary flood breaking the levees on Odd Future’s Tumblr and Tyler’s Twitter isn’t any more revolutionary in genesis than the next. What does separate the social media campaigns—and most definitely Goblin—is Tyler’s #winning personality that revels in losing. Not since Eminem has an emcee captured the violent fountain of youth’s confusion in such a real-time manner. The insanity in Tyler’s ever-more-popular rap character feels real because he too recognizes it. He’s crazy and it’s crazy that we’re listening, but maybe that makes the actual world slightly more sane. Oh, the horror.

PS – URB.com does not know for a fact if there’s Santorum in Tyler’s panties (or even if he wears panties at all), but it’s surely something he’d find hilarious if said about someone other than himself.

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