Tyler, the Creator – Chromakopia

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Tyler, the Creator – Chromakopia

★★★★☆

Released October 28th, 2024 on Columbia Records

It’s hard to believe it, but Tyler, the Creator is 33.

I frequented /mu/ around the time Odd Future (Wolf Gang Kill Them All) first made a name for themselves. Those first releases (The Fucking Tape) were wild, the result of kids getting high on their own skills, doing ignorant hoodrat shit with their friends. It’s a cliche to say it, but you couldn’t make that today. They had a horrorcore bent that mixed abuse and gore, but they had, even at an age where they couldn’t legally drink, killer flows, and a penchant for brilliant lyricism despite the unsettling nature of the subject matter. It was like watching Eric LaRocca develop out of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. There was clearly something there from the beginning. Earl was the lore and Frank Ocean was the mysterious angel but Tyler was, especially, fiercely proud of his beats, his raps, and his overall outsized skills.

Now, on the other side of a whole heap of calendar pages, Tyler, the Creator is one of the pillars of hip hop, a guy equally at home making albums with DJ Drama, headlining Coachella, and keeping that OFWGKTA thing alive, whether through his Golf Wang fashion line or the annual Camp Flog Gnaw music festival. It’s hard not to read all of that into the narrative woven throughout Chromakopia.

Saint Chroma – a bohemian, a libertine, a free spirit – is an artist with massive talents, free-flowing money, and a lifestyle to maintain. Beneath Saint Chroma’s mask, though, is chaos, fear, and paranoia. He can’t trust anyone; doubts tinge his relationships, fueled by perceived transactionalism. Amid all this, a pregnancy scare forces him to confront parenthood, adulthood, and his life all at once. I mean, who hasn’t been there? Ultimately, as told through “Hey Jane” and “I Hope You Find Your Way Home”, the couple decide to have an abortion, leaving Chroma to try to explain himself and his decision that he’s not ready for parenthood.

It all feels a little thiny veiled. “Judge Judy” is clearly about his former girlfriend Reign Judge, but who knows about the rest of it. At the very least, it chronicles Tyler growing up and thinking seriously about parenthood, which is as far removed from the guy rapping on “Bitches Brewin'” as you can probably get. Musically, it borrows liberally from the vibes of both IGOR and Wolf. Suffice to say, if you like either version of Tyler you’ll find something to like here. There’s a certain level of chaos that sets it apart from IGOR, and a free-associating pop psychedelia that is apart from the solid hip hop beats of Wolf, but those are the closest touchpoints to Chromakopia.

It could use a bit of an edit, but like many great albums you know it’s too long but you can’t pinpoint specifically which songs need to go. Kendrick’s sprawling Mr. Morales was like that, too. People often discuss Chromakopia alongside Kendrick’s latest record, and there’s much to support the comparison. They both adopt a similar narrative scope, and a similar streak of strong self-examination. Tyler is a little more coy about the ‘self’ part of that self-examination, but adopting a persona allows for a greater range of dramatics, a certain artistic license that you can’t quite grant your own self.

Similarly, it’s hard to pick a ‘best’ track here. “Sticky” is the party track, with an inspired performance from SexxyRedd. His embrace of Afrobeat on some of the tracks here is actually kind of funny. I listen to a couple of East African stations, 103.5 FM out of Nairobi (Homeboyz Radio) and 88.1 FM out of Dar es Salaam (East Africa Radio). The DJs on the Homeboyz morning show discussed the Grammys a couple of years ago—probably after Call Me If You Get Lost—and both declared that Tyler sucked, refusing to play his music.

4o Hearing the influence on “Sticky” and “Balloon” is interesting in this regard. Elsewhere “Hey Jane” (the title itself a reference to a New York sexual health clinic) makes the case for itself lyrically, “Thought I Was Dead” for vibes, and the closer “I Hope You Find Your…” for both.

It’s another classic, at minimum, and it’s an album that should push a certain ongoing dispute about Big 3s in interesting new directions. Can he be stopped? I mean, everyone can eventually – even Bowie had a bad album – but it’s hard to see a path to his downfall from this vantage point. Maybe in a couple years, haters.

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