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Tyler, the Creator and Lil B are the latest rappers to turn the spotlight on homophobia in hip-hop, but the attention their lyrics attracts suggests attitudes are slowly changing On the surface, the attitudes of LA collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All and fellow Golden State compadre Lil B are polar opposites. The former trade in an adolescent misanthropy heavily flavoured with violent misogyny and homophobic slurs – to such an extent that even in a genre no stranger to either, the frequency with which Odd Future lean on the shock value of lines such as “Rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome” and use of the word “faggot” is notable. On the other hand, Lil B caused a furore – and attracted death threats – last month when he announced his forthcoming album would be titled I’m Gay. Though the former Pack member is straight, it’s hardly out-of-character for a rapper who specialises in stream-of-consciousness surrealism. His penchant for blurring gender and sexuality lines is already well known, whether exclaiming “Damn, I’m a princess” mid-freestyle, referring to himself as a “pretty bitch” or throwing down the gauntlet to the biggest female rapper around: “Nicki Minaj, I’m the finest bitch out!” And with songs entitled I’m God , I Am the Ocean and I’m Paris Hilton , I’m Gay is less of a grand statement than it might appear. Thousands of words have been expended on Odd Future’s lyrical content and What It All Means since their rise to prominence over the past year, but only now – as lead member Tyler, the Creator gears up for the release of his second album Goblin – have they been pressed to explain themselves. Which, in recent interviews, Tyler has done in a particularly mealy-mouthed fashion. “I’m not homophobic,” he declared to NME last week. “I just think ‘faggot’ hits and hurts people.” It would appear that Tyler’s much-vaunted genius does not stretch to making a connection between these statements. Notwithstanding his inability to distinguish between active and cultural homophobia, though, it’s important to remember that Odd Future is not a monolith. Frank Ocean, their R&B associate, has penned a song with an explicitly pro-gay marriage slant : “I believe that marriage isn’t between a man and woman, but between love and love.” And the collective’s sound engineer, Syd tha Kyd , is an open lesbian whose response to the controversy is telling: “When I first started really fucking with Odd Future heavy, my dad was like, ‘Really? They talk about some crazy shit and as a female, you’re slapping a lot of women in the face.’ I’m like, ‘That’s what I do. I slap bitches.’” For Lil B’s part, one suspects he is motivated less by a desire to fight for oppressed minorities than just old-fashioned attention-seeking; announcing the title I’m Gay with the reasoning that “I’m gonna show y’all the words don’t mean shit” isn’t exactly on-message. It’s much the same argument that Tyler uses to excuse his own words; as professional lyricists, it’s unlikely that either Tyler or Lil B actually believes that words are meaningless, but what they both share is a faith in the malleability of words that perhaps makes the idea of entrenched connotations incomprehensible. But Lil B deserves plenty of kudos for refusing to back down, and indeed standing even more strongly, when asked to ally himself with the gay community, declaring himself outright to be “a supporter of GLAAD” . Judging either Odd Future or Lil B on purely moral terms isn’t really adequate, though – and, in fact, is something of a red herring that precludes discussion of their art. What’s interesting about their contrasting attitudes is how they affect the power of that art – and, in particular, why Tyler, the Creator, who relies so heavily on shock tactics, ultimately makes his music toothless. Fundamentally, for all the outrage and shock he garners from easily excited fans, his misanthropy is a cliche of angry male adolescence. He raps: “They claim the shit I say is just wrong/ Like nobody has those really dark thoughts when alone”; it’s pretty much the Odd Future modus operandi in one couplet, but the problem is that so many “outsider” artists have affected transgression by telling the world about their dark thoughts that, wrong or right, it’s become boring. Tyler doesn’t transgress expectations; he follows a well-worn path of faux-rebellion trodden by everyone from the Sex Pistols to Eminem – and the alleged vulnerability Tyler reveals in rapping about his absent father is entirely part and parcel of this archetype. Tyler’s combination of dubious fantasies, anti-gay slurs and emo whining about his upbringing recalls Eminem which doesn’t leave much room for shock. In 2011, this feels impotent and tedious. Odd Future’s defenders in the media emphasise Tyler’s technical skills – and it’s true that his gift for assonance and internal rhymes is impressive. But his talent is only half the story: the shtick they use it for is played out. And it undermines the rest of his aesthetic: he demands our empathy at every turn for his own tough life, but is too limited an artist to show empathy for people who, with all due respect, suffer much more on a daily basis than growing up in a single-parent household. Tyler’s model of male anger ends up feeling a lot more like male privilege – and as conservative and regressive as that implies. As the critic Ann Powers noted recently , “Maybe OFWGKTA raps about rape because none has ever known a victimised woman, so it seems comic book to them.” What both Odd Future and Lil B are doing, at heart, is trolling their elders in the hope of provoking reaction. So why does Lil B seem so much more exciting? Perhaps because he understands that truly brave trailblazing entails trolling your own core demographic, not outsider strawmen who have no time for you anyway. And perhaps because he seems interested in engaging with wider culture at the same time as disappearing into his own head: while he’s made his name by splurging often erratic freestyles on to YouTube as though he’s trying to empty his brain into cyberspace, when Lil B hits the mark he is a visionary talent. In The Age of Information , for instance, he muses on the internet that is the lifeblood of his generation. It won’t have escaped your attention that these culture wars are, once again, largely being fought by straight men. Another California teenager, with a style indebted to both Odd Future and Lil B, could change that. Nineteen-year-old Angel Haze is a bisexual girl of Native American ancestry, whose Altered Ego mixtape is one of the year’s finest. She essays love songs of cosmic scope and reach, pulling together a sequence of startling, heart-squeezing imagery on, for example, Fall for Your Type ; then she turns round and uses her “queerness” as a weapon to deliver the most vituperative nastiness you’ll hear this side of, well, Odd Future. Both Lil B and Angel Haze seem determined to twist and shred questions of love, sexuality, culture and the self into new shapes. If words are malleable to them, that’s only because they themselves are in flux. In contrast, Tyler and Odd Future are stuck in rigid archetypal modes. Lil B understands that hip-hop values aren’t antithetical to progress: when he claims that “in 100 years, people will look back and thank me” for confronting the genre’s homophobia, it’s partly braggadocio – but you wouldn’t bet against him being proven right. And this is how it should be. Personally, as a gay hip-hop fan, I am long since inured to impolitic lyrical content. But as easy as it can be to turn a blind eye, I don’t expect to do this in two decades’ time. Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All Hip-hop Rap Urban music Gay rights Alex Macpherson guardian.co.uk