It’s extraordinarily difficult nowadays for those sacred 18-to-24’ers to avoid the rollicking Los Angeles rap outfit that is OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, for the uninformed). And with understandable reason they flock to the much-hyped collective – the clique’s unforgiving and raucous image is inherently magnetic. Odd Future is essentially Not-Giving-a-Four-Letter-Word 101 for a generation raised on cynical hashtags and Tumblr reposts.

At Odd Future’s cultural prow is Tyler, The Creator, a 20-year-old de facto ringleader whose brash mutilation of conventional rhyme has commanded cosigns from Kanye West to Pharrell Williams. The latter superproducer is Tyler’s revered idol – and it’s easy to see where the admiration is manifest throughout “Goblin,” Tyler’s first major-label foray. The album is lush with unmistakably minimalist beats and stripped-down rhythms manically reverberating like a post-apocalyptic Neptunes production (Read: The inspiration is patently obvious).

But then Tyler, whose antagonistic growl mangles every vulnerable snare and drum kick, begins to rap and the similarities are virtually nil. This is not flat-screen televisions, bottles of Rose and King cover models – it’s nauseating self-torment and gleeful nihilism. To anyone vaguely familiar with the Odd Future brand, “Goblin” deftly delivers and then some.

To cursory followers, the 15-track LP is less of a decisive triumph. For starters, it’s obstinately inaccessible. Even its designated singles are hook-less manifestos of exorbitant vulgarity. “This ain’t no V Tech shit or Columbine/But after bowling, I went home for some damn Adventure Time,” Tyler sneers over the creaking, grating “Yonkers” beat, which could double as the audio overlay for any poltergeist-possessed rocking chair in a campy horror flick. The shameless derision is not a stone’s throw from Top 40 leitmotifs – it’s a fourth-down Hail Mary spiraling toward a vacant end zone.

Therefore, it’s vaguely fitting that Tyler has defiantly compared himself to another foul-minded auteur: Quentin Tarantino. Our faithful emcee has swatted down accusation after accusation that his musical byproducts are of guiltless sexual abuse and recreational hedonism because, well, it’s art and apparently art is exempt from social accountability.

“Goblin” does boast some marginally tasteful underpinnings, especially on twisted romance odes “She” and “Her,” but to qualify the entire album as a transcendent statement would be tragically naive. When, on the terrifyingly upbeat “Tron Cat,” Tyler proclaims he will rape an expectant mother and casually pass it off as ménage à trios, the jaw-drop value is as palpable as ever.

And still there’s nothing particularly ill-advised about shock for the sake of shock. It’s when Tyler ignores that excusable exchange for shlock for the sake of shlock – easy jabs at celebutard targets and sophomoric penis puns – that “Goblin” truly falters. Thankfully, the contrived outrage is fairly limited and when it does present itself, it’s embedded in more inventively offensive contexts.

Yet Tyler’s most defining moments are not his crudest – they’re expressly when he’s fuming with the coarse candidness of a self-denying celebrity. Unsurprisingly, he bookends “Goblin” with two crawling, deliberate tracks that support the album’s running narrative of a disaffected patient confronting his guileless therapist.

On disc-closer “Golden,” Tyler longingly references his teenage brother Earl, who was shooed away to a Samoan boarding school and has been noticeably absent on recent Odd Future recordings. Over shrieking production, Tyler acknowledges his cult following yearning for Earl’s return, but under disparate motives: “See, they’re missing the new album / I’m missing my only friend.”

That “Goblin” is even less yielding to pop tastes than its self-released predecessor is a grand achievement. 2009’s “Bastard” painted a dreary portrait of perpetual self-loathing with occasional bursts of lyrical sunlight. “Goblin” is an even more cathartic purging; aided by a bold resistance to craft an exoteric offering, Tyler affirms his own traumatized persona. It’s the type of record that will be forever analyzed, parsed, criticized, praised and dissected.

And then it will be listened to.

Patrick Svitek is a Medill freshman and DAILY staffer. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed at twitter.com/medill_svitek.

Check out the video for Tyler’s single, “Yonkers,” below: