“IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM, JOIN THEM. IF YOU CAN’T JOIN THEM, KILL THEM. ALL” –Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All Tumblr(2012)

The roots of internet rap as we know it today were largely put down about a decade ago. At that time, Soulja Boy was dancing his way from YouTube to the Billboard charts to the history books with the release of “Crank That,” while Lil B was speeding up rap’s rate of consumption with his prolific output. Concurrently, Odd Future were forming around their de facto leader, Tyler, the Creator. Along with Spaceghostpurrp’s Raider Klan in South Florida and A$AP Mob out of New York, the California misfits were among the first collectives to be born of the social media era. If Lil B and Soulja Boy created a blueprint of how to leverage the internet into a rap career, Odd Future optimized it starting with their 2008 debut release The Odd Future Tape.

They saw ahead to a time when accessibility, lifestyle branding, and “content” are just as important as (if not more than) the music itself. Their very moral compass was connected to the world wide web, where trolling is the quickest way to build an audience. They followed in the footsteps of Wu-Tang Clan and their Wu Wear clothing line, realizing that a logo can be just as iconic as the artists behind it. Entrepreneurship translated into clothing, pop-up shops, stickers, and Adult Swim television shows. Streetwear brands, namely Supreme, were revitalized with their co-signs. “If your nigga had Supreme we was the reason he copped it,” Earl Sweatshirt asserts on 2015’s “AM // Radio.” They made their own brands like Odd Future and later Tyler’s Golf Wang, their own fashion (“dressing like an Easter basket” as Earl once curmudgeonly tweeted), and, essentially, their own micro culture.

They were neither the first alternative rappers nor the first shock rappers nor the first DIY rappers, but they were the first to parlay those qualities into sustainable careers that positioned them alongside cultural leaders. Recent years have seen the rise of punk-indebted rappers like Lil Uzi Vert and Juice WRLD, as SoundCloud has ushered in a sea of real-life undesirables riding a wave of distorted basslines and skittish flows. Both trends are inextricably linked to Odd Future. Their loud, freeform style and out-of-sync production equated to music that didn’t really have a region any more than it had a filter.

Their use of the internet to achieve virtual exposure and generate loyalty via transparency was the first of its kind to successfully scale barriers to mainstream fame. Years before social media apps like Instagram or Snapchat allowed people to feel like they had access to the behind-the-scenes happenings of their favorite artists, Odd Future let fans peer into their lives. They constantly updated their Tumblr and YouTube with photos and videos—of the collective working, skateboarding, eating, or simply just hanging out. The pseudo intimacy of these posts also helped them transcend from local friends to cult stars; they were a group where everyone was made to feel included, a family that brought in fans on the other side of the screen.