Review Summary: Tyler in Technicolor
Like many millennials, I've grown up with Tyler, The Creator. I was 17 when "Goblin" came out, and he was this loud, confrontational guy who was mainly here to shock people. His lyrics were smart, but they were also suuuuuuuuuuuper vulgar, and as a newly-rowdy teen escaping a conservative family, I was all about it. I spent a lot of time in 2012 walking around my small-town college campus with "Her" blasting in the headphones, hating my douchebag neighbors & my somehow-required-even-for-humanities geology class.
But then, at some point leading up to 2017, Tyler grew up. Suddenly he's detonating bombs onto the radio with singles like "See You Again" or his iconic "New Magic Wand". This is Tyler in his late 20's and he's mostly done with the shock jock persona and, by his own admission, trying to really get people to take him seriously as a musician. And he really succeeds! Flower Boy gets him nominated for a Grammy, and IGOR wins him his first.
If I had any criticism for Call Me If You Get Lost, it's that the album, for all it's hits, didn't feel cohesive the way IGOR did. But he's back with this release, it may even be his most cohesive work yet. Just for one example, look at the reprise from "St. Chroma" on the closing track. What really sticks out to me on CHROMAKOPIA is that he's talking about the things people my age (EARLY 30's, for the record) are often thinking/worrying about. Specifically, the question of whether or not to have kids. Millennial musicians in general are talking about it a lot in 2024, look at Charli XCX's "I think about it all the time". Tyler takes a few swings at it, on "Hey Jane" and the gorgeously-arranged "Tomorrow".
Often, as young people, we *know* that our lives are finite, but it's not until we've lived a few decades that we begin to *understand* the extent to which our days are numbered. We realize we only have so much time to make certain decisions. This is why psychologists like Erik Erikson, who break a lifetime into different developmental stages, identify this time in life as a stage known as intimacy vs isolation. Can we share our lives with someone? Can we go on to share our lives with children, who we must take care of and make sacrifices for? Tyler's really tapped into this struggle, I found it relatable!
The backing tracks really groove throughout, especially on tracks like "Judge Judy" or "I Hope You Find Your Way Home". I'm thrilled to hear Tyler singing entire songs. I think it's criminal it took so long for that to be a key feature on his albums, he's a truly talented vocalist. It really feel like he's found his footing between making deeply personal hip-hop & punchy pop hits. Tyler makes great choices on features for this album, especially Daniel Ceasar who shines on "St. Chroma", and Doechii who kills on "Balloon". But look at the credits and the production team is a whole sky of stars: Steve Lacy, Donald Glover, WILLOW, Solange and more. Tyler should get a lot of credit not just for the musician he's matured into, but the producer he's become. He makes really deliberate choices with samples, on "Noid" it's an obscure Zambian psych rock song. Whereas on "Darling, I" he grabs the snaps off of Snoop Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot". Even the whistling into a full brass band on "Sticky" is a deliberate decision, a reference and a gift to HBCU marching bands, who have wasted no time in covering the song.
Tyler ultimately ascends to something higher in "Like Him", where he confronts his ambivalence around fatherhood. He grew up never knowing his father, and it gave him a lot of grief that he expressed in his music from the beginning. how he still sees himself in that idea. Add this all to his mom's voice featuring all over the album, he's really centering his thoughts about family in our modern times.
So what's the final takeaway on CHROMAKOPIA? Life is uncertain, and stressful, but we have to try and be present for as much of it as we can. We need to feel the whole spectrum of human emotion, the pain with the joy, because otherwise a life is missing many colors.
