Davon Wilson met Tyler Okonma—the hip-hop impresario known as Tyler, the Creator—at the Dirty, a skate park in Hawthorne, California, when both were fifteen. “We actually didn’t like each other for that first moment,” Wilson said. “I was, like, ‘Damn, this dude’s loud and annoying.’ I found out he lived across the street from me, and then somehow we bonded over a couch we were trying to ollie over.”
Wilson goes by the name Jasper Dolphin. He became the hype man for Tyler’s hip-hop collective, Odd Future; a prankster on Tyler’s TV show “Loiter Squad”; and, eventually, Tyler’s d.j. (In February, he’ll join Tyler on tour to promote his album “Chromakopia.”) Wilson, who is thirty-four and wears a clipped goatee and a stud in each ear, has a jaunty, down-for-whatever air. He has bungee jumped from a hot-air balloon, ridden a bull, and performed painful stunts in “Jackass Forever.”
One recent Sunday afternoon, two teen-age boys and their middle-aged chaperon met up with Wilson in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium. Camp Flog Gnaw, a music festival and carnival that Tyler founded and Wilson attends religiously, was in full swing: balloon darts, corn dogs, Playboi Carti.
“Hey, what ride should we get on?” Wilson asked.
“I was feeling that one,” one of the teens said, nodding toward a pendulum with screaming people attached to one end. “I’m with that,” Wilson said. “I’m with that a lot.” The chaperon watched apprehensively as the pendulum swung high overhead, twisted, and flipped over its axis. “It’s a little spin spin twin,” Wilson said, giggling. A minute later, he buttoned his sunglasses into a pocket of his cargo pants and strapped in. As the pendulum began to move, arcing up fast and dropping back suddenly, he said something about the treetops, and advised looking at your shoes. When the ride shuddered and reversed, he muttered, “Aw, naw, naw, naw.” At the moment of crisis, he screamed, “The British are coming, y’all!” The chaperon prayed that it would end.
“My legs feel very light—that was great,” Wilson said afterward. “What d’you guys wanna mob now?” The party headed over to a tent in the parking lot, where there was an exhibition of photos from the early days of Odd Future, taken by Brick Stowell, their tour manager at the time. Wilson tried to remember the full name of the group. “Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, Don’t Give a Fuck, Loiter Squad, Little Life, Bacon Boys, Sneaky Snake Ninjas?” he ventured. “Something like that.”
On display were Vans sneakers that Tyler had doodled doughnuts on, and a large spray-painted piece of a Christmas tree with a penis in place of the star. “That dick doesn’t need to be there,” Wilson said, a little wistfully. Kids. The members of Odd Future are still his closest friends. “We’re still in a group text,” he said. “In the morning, somebody’s, like, ‘Food?’ And everybody’s, like, ‘Food, food.’ And we go get food.”
Wilson stopped in front of a group shot centered on Earl Sweatshirt (given name: Thebe Kgositsile.) “This is New York, when Thebe first came back from boarding school in Samoa. Tyler had a broken hand right there. He broke his hand because he socked me in the face on accident. I was, like, ‘My head is harder than your hand.’ ”
Then there was the incident with a firework on Fairfax Avenue, where Odd Future used to have a store. “No names, but somebody burned down a tree in front of the store,” Wilson said. “They felt bad afterward, because they were young and dumb. Fire department came and everything. The tree was on fire. It was falling down. It was landing on the awning of the building next to ours. And then that caught on fire.”
Stowell, who is wiry and energetic, came up and embraced Wilson. Did he remember that time when the guys bought a bunch of knives and ninja stars? And put them in Stowell’s backpack without telling him, right before they crossed the Canadian border? “I was tour manager, staff photographer, his babysitter, got his weed for him,” Stowell said. In Europe, he would steer them away from American fast food, and make them visit monuments. “They’d be, like, ‘The fucking camp counsellor who wants to take photos of us,’ ” he said. “Now they’re, like, ‘God, I’m so glad you did this for us.’ ”
On the last wall was a case containing a jumbo water gun—the reason Odd Future was kicked out of Coachella in 2011. Long story short: they sprayed a security guard in the face and got their wristbands cut, right before a performance by the rapper Lil B. But, as they were leaving, an industry friend gave them new wristbands. They ran back in, and crowd-surfed to the stage for Lil B’s set.
The sun was going down, and Wilson had to go meet his mom. But there was something he wanted to do first. He wanted to hit that ride again. ♦
