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Odd Future’s Mellowhype get re-release date for Fat Possum debut

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Now that the media frenzy and Sweatshirt search have partially abated, you would think that things would slow down for Los Angeles rap vandals Odd Future. You would be wrong.

Mellowhype, the duo of Hodgy Beats and Left Brain, are reissuing the initially self-released ‘Blackendwhite’ on July 12 on Fat Possum Records. Tacking on several new songs and fresh artwork, while subtracting the Earl Sweatshirt-aided ‘Chordaroy’ (reportedly due to clearance issues with the 17-year-old rapper’s parents), the new record figures to sound similar to version 1.0: an adrenal angsty work touching on strip clubs, school hatred and cartoonish cop killings.

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The idea is teenagers making records that parents wouldn’t want their own teenagers to hear. And if you wonder why Odd Future are popular, you’re underestimating the power of that age-old conceit (by age-old, I mean dating back to at least the Jazz Age.) As for ‘Blackendwhite,’ it’s a raw and uneven but sometimes-great document. It sounds like what it is: two angry, gifted kids scarcely out of their teens, making music in a home studio surrounded by their friends, and loving acts of creation and destruction.

But that era is over. They’ll never have the experience of recording unencumbered by massive expectations, obscene hype and forced maturity. And that’s a shame, because this is a fun record that balances woozy ambiance with tear-the-rec-room-up bangers (see the anti-police screed that shares its name with a famous NWA song). On the plus side, they can now afford to fix up any rec room.

Odd Future just announced a four-date West Coast tour, including a June 18 performance at the House of Blues on Sunset. It sold out in a matter of hours.

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Mystery solved: Earl Sweatshirt, his mother and his poet-father communicate with the New Yorker

-- Jeff Weiss

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