When MellowHype first released BlackenedWhite on Halloween of last year, the world was a very different place for Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. Events that would eventually cement the collective's budding stardom-- Tyler, the Creator's "Yonkers" becoming a viral sensation, their seminal performance on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon", Tyler inking a deal with XL-- were either weeks or months away. The group at large was still strictly a sensation in a small pocket of the Internet, somewhat mysterious, amorphous, confusing and-- as anyone who tried to grab an album from Odd Future's official blog only to be met with a broken download link could attest-- amateur.
Released after that initial rush of online hype, BlackenedWhite (along with Domo Genesis' Rolling Papers) was, if not an introduction point, at least the first new music released since many had initially heard of Odd Future. Described on the crew's Tumblr as "The Perfect Soundtrack For Mobbing On A Dark Halloween Night," and littered with references to dead cops, the album easily fit into the general perception of what Odd Future's music was about.
So here we are, some eight-and-a-half months later, and BlackenedWhite has now been remastered, rearranged, and re-released by Fat Possum into a market where Tyler easily coexists next to pop stars. And yet, oddly enough, MellowHype's role is almost precisely the same, again representing the first new release by Odd Future since being embraced again by a wider audience. But where in October 2010 it might've been hard to pinpoint exactly where MellowHype stood in relation to guys like Tyler or Domo or Earl Sweatshirt, time has allowed the different personas within Odd Future to distinguish themselves.
Hodgy Beats' wild-eyed glare can be seen next to Tyler on stage during Odd Future's shows, and it's easy to see how he could be thought of as Tyler's sidekick. And in fact, when people talk about Odd Future on a macro level, especially when that discussion is boiled down to the more controversial elements of the music, who they're really talking about is Tyler (and, to a lesser extent, Earl), oftentimes glossing over the individual members of the group. Part of that is by design, of course: Tyler has always been front and center, and not only is his star power blatantly obvious, but he feeds on being on a lightning rod. But lost in the shuffle is that the other arms of Odd Future are putting out music that is far from Tyler's trolling self-autopsies, which is both a good and bad thing.
As a rapper, Hodgy seems mostly concerned with stringing together words on the basis of their sound in rapid-fire fashion. This is seen most obviously in "Igotagun" and "64", the two new tracks added to Blackenedwhite for the reissue. He doesn't have Tyler's focus or imagination, but his garden-variety shit talking, combined with gleefully inhabited fables of drug pushing and cop killing, bring the sort of levity that you would expect from a group of skate-punk "Jackass" descendents, and in a way that's much less obnoxious than, say, Tyler's "Bitch Suck Dick". What can't be found here are all the things that upset people about Odd Future, namely Tyler's reliance on slurs and his elaborate rape fantasies. And though Hodgy doesn't possess Earl's effortless rapping skill (who does?), his penchant for tongue-twisting alliteration further separates him from the stoned flows of fellow Odd Future stoners Domo and Mike G.
The flipside of that is when Tyler storms through on "Fuck the Police" (now rebranded for Best Buys as "F666 the Police"), the effect is slightly jarring. While Hodgy's Flocka homage and producer Left Brain's turn as Timbaland circa "We Need a Resolution" work just fine, Tyler tells a strikingly vivid story of getting pulled over and murdering a cop in what is easily the most accomplished verse on the album. BlackenedWhite is the most fun Odd Future release (excepting, arguably, the collaborative mixtapes) and it's one of the easier to digest, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny in the way that Tyler's or Earl's work does.
This cleaned up version of the album also puts a stronger concentration on the Left Brain productions that lean heavy on Southern rap. Replacing the distinctly Tyler-esque "Chordaroy" and "Loco", as well as the trifles "Stripclub" and "Gram", are the aforementioned new tracks, both of which call back to the beats that the Neptunes used to give to Clipse. The result is both a more succinct and cohesive full-length. The catch-22 for MellowHype is that while their centrism certainly has its merits, their music is unlikely to convert anyone that has, at this point, already written off Odd Future. Which leaves them with a solid, fun rap album to satiate a feverish cult and a growing number of casual fans. Things, all told, could be worse.
