"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 other females in the face.' I'm like, 'That's what I do. I slap bitches, Dad.'" That's Sydney Bennett talking from the backseat of a van during an MTV interview. Bennett, whose stage name is Syd tha Kyd, comes up often from Odd Future defenders. As the only female member of the otherwise testosterone-fueled OFWGKTA and one of the few openly gay figures in the hip-hop community, she's often cited as proof that the collective can't possibly be as hateful in practice as all that anti-gay, anti-female lyrical violence portends.
Syd maintains a low-profile but powerful role within the collective, producing beats and offering up her parents' home for the boys to record in. Though she stands tranquilly behind the decks during the group's live gigs, her presence is commanding-- try watching her as she menacingly nods along to the beat and slowly raises her middle finger over her head without getting chills. But as a side act dubbed the Internet, alongside Odd Future member Matt Martians, that take-no-prisoners, "I slap bitches, Dad" confidence is absent. On one hand, that's the logical result of a bona fide badass showing her soft side, dipping her toes into sounds gentler than anything else in the Odd Future catalog. But Purple Naked Ladies is frustratingly flat regardless of Syd and her cohort's reputations-- it comes off as a demo reel of an act that's still fiddling with what sounds right and what doesn't.
Think "Odd Future R&B side project" and you're bound to imagine the velvety slink of Frank Ocean's "Novacane". But Purple Naked Ladies leans more heavily toward neo-soul, experimental jazz, and funk than anything else. At its brief best-- during its final three songs-- the album recalls Baduizm-era Erykah, soulful and patient and poetically narrative-driven. "Fastlane", for example, pairs a steady boom-bap backdrop with Syd's featherlight singing voice as she creates a four-minute metaphor out of love and car traffic.
The album's backend is a welcome respite from the awkward instrumental clutter that bogs down too much of the record. Too much here demands fast-forwarding, from the hollow instrumental opener "Violent Nude Women" to "C*nt", which strikes an ear-perkingly rich note for all of a few seconds before dissolving into an overcrowded mess. Lacking in songwriting muscle, many of these songs sound simultaneously thin and cluttered. As debuts go, it's primarily a failure of editing-- an EP of tightened versions of the record's best cuts would have packed a stronger first punch.
Purple Naked Ladies isn't going to do much for you if you closely follow the genres it dabbles in. Like many spinoffs from the Odd Future machine, it's a small piece of a larger puzzle, useful for obsessives concerned with keeping their catalogs up to date. In that sense, it's also a reminder that Odd Future is about strength in numbers, functioning best as a gaggle of goony characters instead of individual breakout stars in the making (excepting Tyler, of course). That's okay for now-- those boys would be hard-pressed to fill Syd's spot if she took off on her own.
