It’s tempting to match Chromakopia to Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & the Massive Steppers, the final occasion rap album that doubled as a 73-minute-long remedy session. (Tyler, the Creator, ever-punctual, clocks out earlier than the hour’s over.) However it’s simply as simple to overlook that 15 years in the past, simply seconds into his debut report, Tyler Okonma pitched down his voice to introduce the primary in a forged of characters that inhabit Bastard: Dr. TC, who acts as his therapist. The primary piece of knowledge he reveals about himself? His father’s useless, or he may as properly be. The very fact of his absence has been a prevailing theme in Tyler’s discography: regardless of tweeting that he’d already moved on from that trauma whereas recording 2013’s Wolf, he nonetheless addressed him immediately and vehemently on songs like ‘Reply’, suggesting that it was extra in regards to the development of a story than a private reckoning. That picture of Tyler, the Creator now appears distant, but additionally, to his oldest followers as a lot as himself, inescapable – he’s as fast to invoke the early days of Odd Future on the brand new album as he’s to declare, “That model of T that you simply knew was a reminiscence.” However the signature rawness with which he tackles his contradictions, all the time in some way muddling into self-mythology, stays integral to his progress as a lyricist and performer.
The build-up to Chromakopia primed us for a brand new period of Tyler, the Creator: a sepia-toned visible aesthetic, a primary character drawn from Norton Juster’s 1961 youngsters’s ebook The Phantom Tollbooth, and so, it appeared, a brand new persona. Each one in all his current alter egos, from Tyler Baudelaire on Name Me If You Get Misplaced to the titular characters of IGOR and Flower Boy, aren’t too not like the early ones in that they served as home windows into his personal psyche, besides that they allowed for softer, extra introspective, and, as an extension of his superstar standing, paranoid sides of himself. However after killing off his former selves on the music video for 2023’s ‘Sorry Not Sorry’, Tyler is left with no alternative however to take away the veil of a personality examine; he offers kind to the masked St. Chroma character, carrying a navy jacket and foreshadowed in that very same video, however doesn’t go as far to weave him into the narrative material of the album. The facade is thinner than ever, and he has nobody to show to however himself. On the album spotlight ‘Take Off Your Masks’, he tears into the lives of a number of characters pretending to be one thing aside from their true selves, from a closeted Christian preacher to a stay-at-home mother burying her loneliness and melancholy. However in a traditional twist, he confirms the suspicion that his final goal is, actually, himself: “Boy, you egocentric as fuck, that’s why you afraid of bein’ a mother or father/Boy, that remedy wanted, I dare you to hunt it, however I’ll lose a guess.”
So Chromakopia scans because the dare greater than the precise remedy, staring into the mirror of an early midlife disaster and eventually seeing – by way of the concern and trepidation moderately than any semblance of therapeutic – your reflection stripped right down to the core. What may’ve been one other victory lap as a substitute shines as an try to reconcile his conflicted persona – and the disparate types that include it. The sonic chaos of Name Me If You Get Misplaced rumbles by way of these songs, too, however as a substitute of feeling celebratory and vibrant, it feeds into the report’s insular and anxious stream. Its bangers are additionally standouts, not solely as a result of they discover Tyler at his most rambunctious and electrical however due to how well-tailored they’re to his friends: the wildly overcrowded ‘Sticky’ explodes with verses from Glorilla, Sexyy Redd, and Lil Wayne, Schoolboy Q and Santigold be part of him in swaggering by way of ‘Thought I Was Useless’, and Doechii stands out as the most effective match to his maniacal vitality on the penultimate ‘Balloon’. However his flexes make Chromakopia sound no much less unsettled, as if the boastfulness is simply a type of self-preservation that in the end can’t save him from himself. “All I obtained is pictures of my ‘Rari and a few foolish fits,” he realizes on ‘Tomorrow’; “So I’ll be lonely with these Grammys when it’s all stated and accomplished” is his conclusion after sidestepping monogamy on the lavish ‘Darling, I’.
Along with dialing down the shock consider favour of confessionalism, Tyler’s post-Cherry Bomb output tends to eschew the bratty sprawl of his early work to create immersive, although nonetheless overwhelming, listening experiences. Chromakopia pulls this off whereas being each conceptually and musically messier than something he’s put out since Flower Boy, however solely as a result of it’s reflective of his tumultuous journey. It has no proper being as cohesive as it’s, but the exultant rage of ‘Rah Tah Tah’ naturally results in the fixed unease of being within the public eye on ‘Noid’, which brilliantly samples ’70s Zamrock band Ngozi Household’s ‘Nizakupanga Ngozi’; the frantic pulse of ‘I Killed You’ relaxes into the sexual euphoria of ‘Decide Judy’; and the hope he expresses on ‘Take Your Masks Off’ – towards these different characters, fictional or not, but in addition himself – ripples by way of the start of ‘Tomorrow’.
However maybe nothing binds these songs collectively greater than Tyler’s try to show this self-exploration into empathy: one thing lighter. It’s not all the time profitable, typically self-consciously so. The ending of ‘Decide Judy’ is darker than anybody may anticipate, to the purpose that Tyler himself appears not sure easy methods to deal with the friction musically. ‘Hey Jane’, which shares its title with a telehealth abortion supplier, is framed as a dialog between himself and a lady within the midst of a being pregnant scare; although his perspective contains strains like “You gotta cope with all of the psychological and the bodily change/ All of the heaviest feelings, and the bodily ache,” his phrases come up quick. It’s not till he flips the script once more by adopting the girl’s perspective that they actually resonate: “I’m 35 and my ovaries won’t reset/I don’t wanna dwell my entire life feeling remorse/Rattling, a sense you possibly can by no means perceive/You simply hope to god I get my interval once more.” No strain, they each affirm, a phrase that echoes elsewhere on the album, which after all is rarely in a position to shake it off solely.
Tyler, the Creator will not be able to embrace the prospect of fatherhood or different varieties of dedication, however his worries round them additionally differentiate Chromakopia from an album like Mr. Morale. Extra importantly, the extent of vulnerability on show justifies Tyler’s option to let his mom, Bonita Smith, function the Greek refrain on the album – a stark distinction to DJ Drama’s hypeman position on Name Me If You Get Misplaced. She’s the primary voice we hear on Chromakopia, and he is aware of her recommendation will illuminate his shortcomings as a lot as information him alongside. However the actual intestine punch arrives on ‘Like Him’, which ends along with her admitting that his father was a “good man,” going so far as to assert accountability for his absence. The query that haunts Tyler all through the monitor and hides behind many others right here – how a lot he actually might need in widespread with this particular person he’s by no means met – takes on a completely new that means. Tyler doesn’t study it additional; there’s no suggestion the revelation has modified his angle within the slightest. But when nothing else, it’s an incentive to cease perceiving and developing himself by way of the lens of others – particularly when there’s so many people. Solely he is aware of the place that leaves Tyler, the Creator.
