You probably know what happened after ‘ Yonkers’. The week after its release, Tyler and Hodgy appeared on Jimmy Fallon, aided by a ski mask, a smoke machine, cadaverous girls dressed as escaped mental patients, and The Roots. At the end of the performance, Tyler pounced on the late-night host and Mos Def marauded the camera screaming “Swag”. All analogies feel forced, but it was the closest thing ’90s babies would get to The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, The Sex Pistols on Top of the Pops, or Nirvana at the 1992 VMAs. A generational shift had occurred, opening up creative avenues that had temporarily been occluded, and re-introducing sonic and artistic inspirations like Dr. Seuss, Thrasher, and Salvador Dali.

It’s hyperbolic to claim that Odd Future became the most influential artists of their generation, but it wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. You can easily make the case for Lil Wayne, Gucci Mane, Lil B, Drake, or Kendrick Lamar. But Odd Future completely ransacked the blueprint and turned it tie-die. They realised the goal that Tyler once stated on his now defunct Formspring: “To Make Great Music, And Be The Leader For The Kids Who Were Picked On And Called Weird. And To Show The World That Being Yourself And Doing What You Want Without Caring What Other People Think Is The Key To Being Happy.”

Before Odd Future, 2000s rap crews had largely been collections of solo artists that came together for cross-promotional mixtapes (Brick Squad, Re-Up Gang, Dipset, Young Money). Odd Future expanded that model so that kids grasped it as a revolutionary movement. They weren’t just a like-minded congregation; this was a cult. Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. Afterwards, you saw A$AP Mob, Pro Era, Save Money, Brockhampton, and TDE’s Black Hippy – the latter of whom never even released an album together but understand the “closed hand equals a fist” marketing sensibility that Tyler and OF mastered.

If Lil B’s based eccentricity helped demolish the reductive binaries between underground and mainstream, Odd Future served as the wrecking crew. They screamed at reporters to never call them underground, but openly championed subterranean artists like Madlib and James Pants (whose name even inspired Earl Sweatshirt’s pseudonym). They revitalised Supreme as a brand, inspired a million kids to wear psychedelic colour schemes and exponentially increased the popularity of skateboarding and cat ownership.

Their crew even had its own in-house photographer, a tiny detail, but one that helped inspire young rappers to think of their music as being bigger than hip-hop. You can trace that concept back to Basquiat’s collaboration with Rammellzee through Kanye West, but Tyler and Odd Future translated it to ’90s babies, who absorbed it as first-hand gospel. The influence is ubiquitous, from their aesthetic (see the cover of good kid, m.A.A.d city) to starting their own multi-million-dollar clothing line, carnival, magazine, and television show.

“I was talking with Dave Wirtschafter [board member at talent agency William Morris Endeavor] and he said, ‘What’s the difference between Odd Future and an advertising company?’ I said, ‘Nothing’,” Christian Clancy, the group’s manager, told me in 2013. “Tyler writes, takes his own photos, draws, makes great videos, and I’m sure will make great films. Love him or hate him, he’s one of the most creative kids alive, and his following appreciates his honesty.”