Tyler, the Creator: Chromakopia review – early midlife crisis triggers a freaked-out psychodrama | Tyler, the Creator

News of Tyler, the Creator’s seventh album got here as one thing of a shock: it arrived a matter of months after he introduced on social media that he wouldn’t be releasing any new music this 12 months. The promotional marketing campaign during the last couple of weeks instructed that Chromakopia can be a high-concept piece of labor, the type of album that takes listeners a very long time to totally unpick. It concerned a succession of mysterious movies that shifted from the sepia tones of an outdated TV present into full color, typically – however not at all times – that includes the rapper sporting a masks and a army uniform: directing a platoon of males right into a delivery container with the album’s title emblazoned on its aspect, which he then blew up; barging his method via a crowd of individuals earlier than being assailed by a fan whose enthusiasm turns right into a type of eye-rolling insanity and whose cellphone turns into a gun; rapping on high of a army plane inside which his masked alter ego lurks, glowering. Hypothesis as to what all of it meant adopted, because it was clearly supposed to: one steadily floated principle was that the album would contain the debut of recent persona, presumably based mostly on a personality from the traditional youngsters’s novel The Phantom Tollbooth.

However, just like the announcement that no new music was forthcoming, the enterprise with the masks seems to be misdirection, not less than so far as an alter ego is anxious. Lyrically, Chromakopia provides each impression of being each prosaic and private: it feels in some way telling that not one of the album’s visitor artists – Lil Wayne and Infantile Gambino amongst them – have been listed on streaming companies, as if trumpeting their presence would distract from its inward-looking temper. There’s stuff in regards to the pressures of fame (Noid and Rat Tah Tah prickle with mistrust of everybody from Tyler, the Creator’s accountants to his followers) and a swaggering dismissal of his critics on Thought I Was Useless, however the principle lyrical themes that run via it are the type of worries that are likely to beset folks at that time in your 30s the place it turns into abundantly clear to even probably the most ostensibly irresponsible and carefree particular person that you just’re now an grownup. Whether or not your failure to discover a lasting relationship to date means you’re fated to dwell the remainder of your life alone; whether or not parenthood is one thing you’re able to embracing; whether or not you’re doomed to repeat the errors made by your individual dad and mom; whether or not the profession you’ve been pursuing is sufficiently rewarding in and of itself.

These are seldom simple inquiries to reply, which maybe accounts for why Chromakopia sounds so unsettled. The lyrics double again and contradict themselves – switching from boastful self-aggrandisement to crippling self-doubt and loathing, typically within the house of a single verse. On Tomorrow he goes from loudly proclaiming his free-spiritedness – “I don’t like cages, I’d slightly be flooding” – to confessing a form of despairing vacancy: “All I obtained is pictures of my ’Rari and a few foolish fits.”

Elsewhere, its tracks generally tend to finish up within the final place you count on. Choose Judy begins out as a standard-issue intercourse rhyme – “physique rubs, bondage and cream pies” – full with a backing observe peppered with orgasmic moans, however ends with a suicide observe, whereas Like Him ponders the subject of paternal abandonment earlier than winding up with the voice of Tyler, the Creator’s mom, informing him that it’s her fault he by no means met his father. On Take Your Masks Off, he admonishes a succession of figures for dwelling a lie, from a homophobe who seems to be a closeted gay to a rich however sad housewife, earlier than all of a sudden turning the lyrical deal with himself: “You speak a variety of shit to not even be primary.”

The music is equally unsettled. Tracks shift and slip their moorings, lurching from one sound to a different, steadily altering fully over the course of some minutes. Musical concepts gush chaotically forth. Noid is constructed round distorted, heavy-metal-ish guitars, however the energy chords they strike preserve abruptly short-circuiting to oddly disquieting impact: a hanging pattern from 70s Zamrock band Ngozi Household vies for house with Willow Smith’s softly cooing backing vocals. Elsewhere, minimal Neptunes-influenced beats abut lush Seaside Boys harmonies, and folky acoustic guitar figures seem alongside lush G-funk-inspired synths and the sound of an 80s R&B sluggish jam is disturbed by machine-gun drum rolls. It’s held collectively by a profusion of gasps and grunts and feral barks that thread via the rhythm tracks, lending even probably the most laid-back tracks a claustrophobic really feel.

After an hour, it ends with none actual sense of decision: the closing observe is named I Hope You Discover Your Method Dwelling, however one doesn’t maintain out a lot hope. It finds Tyler, the Creator nonetheless thrashing round – “I’m slipping, I’m slipping … I would like a hand” – always contradicting himself about his hopes for the long run. An album that started with its creator denying its existence, Chromakopia in the end appears to manifest a state of confusion, through which every little thing is in flux and nothing is sort of because it initially appears. It achieves that to enthralling and exhausting impact.