The world has watched Tyler, The Creator grow up – his first album (or mixtape) Bastard came out just as he turned 18 and was ripe with an energy of disruption of disrespect. The trilogy of albums it sparked was rough, but powerful – a shotgun blast of disdain for all that was clean and shiny, inspired by genres like Horrorcore. Its ending album, Wolf, marked Tyler’s arrival to the space of rap legends, and with his feet underneath him, he spent his next years reflecting on himself, his past work, and further experimenting with his sound, which led him to produce a lot of work, including his three most celebrated albums (Flower Boy, IGOR, and CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST) The tracks from this era of artistic success and worldwide recognition centered around romance, love, admittance – including the artist coming to terms with his bisexuality, a centering thought in Flower Boy. Despite its introspection though, these albums kept the naivety of Tyler’s old work, presenting him as a man working through a maze, before his next, and most recent album CALL ME WHEN YOU GET LOST, placed him in a more confident spot as he enjoyed the benefits of fame. This might feel like a lot of information to cover before even starting the discussion on CHROMAKOPIA, but the weight of Tyler’s lyrics tends to involve a bit of required reading (or Genius annotations).
CHROMAKOPIA takes off with a heavy march and a voicemail – two recurring elements throughout the album. The latter comes from his mother, who was featured on his last album, CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, and was specifically cited by Tyler as an inspiration for the album, which he calls an amalgamation of lessons his mom tried to teach him. Alongside themes of desire, intimacy, secrecy, and revelation, CHROMAKOPIA is presented through a new lens of maturity for Tyler – his anger and ego have aged into confidence and direction, but he’s still faced with doubt he’s failed to move past. The first track, “St. Chroma” introduces the narrative perspective of the album as Tyler mixes whispers of inspiration alongside a chorus singing “Can you feel the fire?” Inferno was first seen as an element in the music video teaser for “St. Chroma”, where the masked persona of Tyler blows up a bright green shipping container in a glorious explosion. Similarly, CHROMAKOPIA (interpreted as an abundance of color) is an eruption of emotion, energy, and personality, with fast tracks and intense, layered production that can make it hard to tell when one track ends and the other begins. Its rock-inspired style is very reminiscent of one of Tyler’s earlier albums, Cherry Bomb, and rest assured the electricity in “St. Chroma” continues to crackle throughout the album, as Tyler combines elements of lo-fi, East Coast rap, punk, and hip-hop fusion to carefully craft a peek at his new, matured persona.
Hard rap highlights are “Rah Tah Tah”, which sees Tyler explore his new markers of identity, as both an artist and celebrity, and talk about his new ride, a LaFerrari that gets name-dropped throughout the songs (oh, how far we’ve come from “Slater”), celebrates both his new girl and his treatment of her, and the success of his old friend Lionel Boyce (boy, The Bear connections go deep in this album). It’s a fairly classic, roll-your-windows-down type track with just enough of Tyler’s typical wit to feel properly authored. Another top track is “Sticky”, a celebrity-packed track (GloRilla, Sexyy Red, Lil Wayne), which features a stadium-style sound design as the group weaves their definitions of self-worth and respect together. It’s already showing signs of being one of the most popular songs off the album as the chorus sticks on listener’s minds. My personal favorite from the punchier tracks is “Thought I Was Dead”, and not just because of the awesome horns. The track focuses on Tyler’s ability to stay at the top of the charts despite backlash. “Pull up old tweets, pull up old t-shirts, all that, I’ll moonwalk over that,” references how Tyler’s new sensitivity meant he was able to recover from past missteps while maintaining his unapologetic tone. But, as with the rest of the album, Tyler doesn’t hide away from attacking himself on the track either, calling out his hypocrisy for using hateful language in his first albums before admitting his own feelings of queerness years later.
While Tyler was never unwilling to dabble in lighter genres, such as jazz or funk, CHROMAKOPIA takes a deep step into lo-fi in some of my favorite tracks – “Darling, I” takes down the volume, but not the tempo, as a higher-pitch Tyler (assisted by Teezo Touchdown) reflects on his love for variety in CHROMAKOPIA’s most Flower Boy-esque track. At first using an extensive car collection as an allegory for partners, saying each has their own lovable quality, Tyler then takes a step back and admits he’s afraid of ‘forever’. The masterpiece aspect of the song is how upfront Tyler is with his worst traits; “It’s not fair just to be stuck with me” sets up the confrontational relationship Tyler has with his own flaws in a double reference to both living with Tyler, and the struggles Tyler has living with his own thoughts. On a less dark note, the similarly breezy track “Judge Judy” talks about Tyler finding a partner on a similar intimate wavelength as him, and appreciating her for not judging his tastes – a surprisingly sweet take on an explicit subject, that really shows the difference between Tyler’s new and old perspective.
The narrative highlights of the album are “Hey Jane” and “Like Him”, which focus on questions we haven’t seen answered in Tyler’s work before, as we follow his feelings of parenthood following a positive test from a partner. The former’s lyrics have male and female parts (both sung by Tyler) talking about their fears in the face of a new phase of life. Keeping with themes of honesty present in the album, the song sees Tyler at his most authentic – he admits he’s terrified of parenthood, and that he doesn’t want to have a kid with someone he hasn’t fallen in love with. “Like Him” adds another layer of complexity to Tyler’s feelings, as he questions whether he would end up like his own absent father or not. Fans will remember the extreme angst Tyler holds around growing up without a father figure, and as a vocal track from his mother reminds Tyler of how he looks just like his father, Tyler finds himself doubting his previous hatred and trying to reassure himself he’s nothing like his father.
My alternative highlights were “Noid” (which I already talked about enough) and the closing track, “I Hope You Find Your Way Home”, which concludes the story Tyler presents about parenthood, stating that his partner chose to leave and raise the child alone. Against a soulful duet between synthetic and classical piano, he reckons with doubt after the rejection, admitting he wasn’t ready while also being reminded of past moments, both successes and failures. While the track finishes the story heard earlier, it feels a bit inconclusive emotionally – Tyler is still in a transitory state, which is beautifully established by his ending lyrics “On the plane by myself, I ain’t pack shit/Yeah, eating candied yams and some catfish”. That’s not exactly a bad thing though – as with Call Me If You Get Lost, the album loops, a good chance to reflect on purpose, maturity, and confidence.
The struggle (and benefit) of rap is that it tends to be lyrically dense, where it’s easy to get lost in the weeds and meander without really saying anything cohesive. With a large catalog of 14 songs and rarely a blank moment, CHROMAKOPIA is an absolute avalanche of words and experiences, but Tyler, The Creator, ensures that every track feels like it has a point, or at least a solid beat. While it has some tough competition from his past work, I think that the album could be a gateway to a wholly new sound from Tyler, as he balances his age, admiration for his inspirations, and a desire to make something new – and if that happens, everyone will be pointing back towards CHOMAKOPIA. Until then though, I think the songs will worm themselves into playlists of all genres, and we’ll see the mark the album tour leaves on the world. I’m rating this album an 8/10.
Photo credits from Tyler Okonma via Instagram.
