Odd Future's Tyler the Creator Goes "Yonkers" in New Video

Tyler the Creator

​Odd Future is coming back to San Francisco in a couple of weeks, and if you've never discovered what the L.A. hip-hop/skate/art collective is about, Tyler the Creator's latest single (and video) "Yonkers," will give you a pretty good idea. Tyler, the ring leader of posse, gives us the darker side of Odd Future here, as he touches on drugs, violence, sex and his own inner turmoil.

"Yonkers" is the first track from Tyler the Creator's upcoming album Goblin. In both the song and video, he spends the better part of three minutes working to suppress the desires of his id-like alter ego, Wolf Haley. Opening with a silhouetted Tyler posing as Rodin's "The Thinker," he then pops into visible focus, embarking on a psychological and existential examination of himself. He eats cockroaches, vomits, threatens to stab Bruno Mars, contemplates the significance of cross-dressing, and offers up the services of his therapist. Meanwhile, the camera slowly zooms in and out and constantly shifts focus as Tyler does his thing.

"Yonkers" has a Tyler-produced, characteristically paranoid beat that starts out with a simple kick-snare drum track, but picks up intensity as the song goes on with Jack-Nicholson-in-The-Shining effects and disorienting piano stabs that could delude the most sure-minded of us. By the end of the video, having given up on his personal battle, Tyler pulls a noose out of thin air and hangs himself, shifting back to silhouette form. So yeah, if you go see them at Slim's on Feb. 22, expect this kind of emotional rollercoaster.

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