Orange Juice

4/19/11

Kroger: $40.12

I do not remember everything I purchased at Kroger, but I do remember a good deal of orange juice was involved. As is mentioned in the song, I am counting calories, and I paid for orange juice with only 50% the normal amount of calories. It only later occurred to me that I was likely paying a corporation to put water in my orange juice. I could not decide if that bothered me or not so I kept buying the same brand.

This music video raises larger questions than that of watered-down orange juice, however. Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All is an emerging teenage shock-rap group from Los Angeles who is gaining steam by capitalizing on the remnants of what is still considered taboo in America. Combining a love of junk culture with adolescent rape fantasies, avant technological use, and professional musicianship, Odd Future is gaining critical acclaim while inciting a good deal of controversy. Leader Tyler the Creator recently came out with statements supporting the Columbine killers. We know that the plurality of hip-hop consumers are young white men, and we also know that horror themes have succeeded on a mass-scale before by white hip-hop performers such as Eminem and the Insane Clown Posse. This is the first instances of African-American performers seeking to tread this ground, almost challenging older generations to recall Reefer Madness, where young black men smoked marijuana and were thus inspired to rape white women. This presentation either exhibits a unity within hip hop culture where everything is fair game under the broad umbrella of internet freedom and racial harmony, or another instance of the expression of intelligent young black men subsumed under their own controversy venting smoke cloud.