Tyler, the Creator has always seemed to bristle a little bit at Odd Future being called a "hip hop collective", as they are introduced as on many talks shows. I think Tyler sees OFWGKTA and himself as artists that happen to make hip hop, among other things. That attitude is reflected in the huge amount of effort Tyler brings to his videos (which he directs as Wolf Haley) - they really are an integral part of his artistic output.
A case in point is the video for "Tamale" which came out last night at midnight EST. Throughout the night, Tyler detailed all the work that had gone into the video, down to making the blue pillow at the end of the video the exact right color. He did that, of course, in his characteristic stream of consciousness ALL CAPS manner. It's a big difference than the usual "here's the video for this song" announcement.
So today we're watching the music video that was an integral part of Tyler, The Creator's early success, "Yonkers" from 2011, directed by Tyler's directing pseudonym, Wolf Haley.
To get a sense of how big this video was for Tyler, you only have to look to the amount of times he's referenced in later work. Sometimes he is disgusted at fans that just love him for that video, and sometimes he wears it like a badge of honor, saying things like "I ate one roach and I made a lot of money" in "Domo23". Throughout his album Wolf, he frequently traces the beginning of his popularity back to this video.
The video itself is extremely simple. It consists of a shot of Tyler on a stool in black and white. It makes use of a perspective control lens which allowed for the unique blur effects that are featured heavily in the video. Eventually Tyler has a roach, which crawls around on his hands until he takes a bite out of it and vomits in silhouette. He later hangs himself.
The actual song "Yonkers" contains another verse (by his alter ego Wolf Haley) but this was cut out for the purposes of the video. I suspect this was both for time as well as for the fact that the verse is a thematic departure from the rest of the song, and wouldn't have fit in the music video.
This video got a huge boost when Kanye West tweeted about it in late February 2011, just two weeks after it was released. Kanye even called it the greatest music video of 2011 (in February), and due to the fact that Kanye West was one of the biggest things on Twitter in early 2011, this made a pretty huge impact. It's no surprise that Tyler points this video as a big break for him.
It's also easy to forget how many things were a little shocking about this video when it came out. The cockroach and the vomiting made it a sort of visceral experience, and at the time OFWGKTA was styling themselves as a pretty crazy group of people, putting out videos like "Earl" which depicted the group drinking a ridiculous blend of substances and spitting up blood. This video bridged the gap between those types of videos where a member of OFWGKTA pulls his fingernail off, and the pieces that Tyler puts out now like "IFHY".
