Cloaked in a colorfully cartoonish, surrealistic aesthetic that sometimes drifts towards nightmarish, Tyler, The Creator and his music can often be boiled down to their obvious absurdity. His lyrics, as well as his imagery, are rooted in exaggeration and childlike carelessness, but the albums he’s released in the past couple of years verify a certain self-awareness and emotional maturity that I would argue, was always there. As his name would suggest, Tyler is always creating and producing something. He is the visionary behind everything he’s ever released, and never seems to operate without a certain concept in mind. Though goofy and loud and audacious, it’s clear from his music and his videos that Tyler is not above earnestness, sentimentality, or an appreciation of aesthetic beauty.
His 2017 album, Flower Boy, felt like a dream — not necessarily the fever dream of Cherry Bomb, but an introspective journey partnered with pastels and bumblebees. It’s on this album that Tyler explores and plays with his sexuality, and perhaps unintentionally complicates the foundational aspects of masculinity we see so often in male rappers — in male artists in general. In the undeniable hit “See You Again”, Tyler places himself in a hyper-masculine setting, a far departure from the trampoline/ass he jumps on in the “Tamale” music video or the terrifying dollhouse in “IFHY”. It opens on a nondescript navy-esque ship in the ocean, where several other men march in neat rows slowly to the beat. Tyler stands out in a yellow beret and a floral jumpsuit, legs flailing as they march. Before the chorus hits, the men all stand to face the camera and salute, while Tyler tilts his body slightly off-center and lazily sticks a hand to his forehead — feigning a salute, opposing the gesture. The rest of the videos from this record play with colors, contrasts, shadows, and impeccable special effects that give this album its cinematic quality. It’s all together thrilling, visually stunning, and emblematic of Tyler’s burgeoning emotional odyssey.
With the apparent awakening shown in Flower Boy, it only makes sense that Tyler’s next album would be an even bolder display of his emotional reckoning. Tyler’s 2019 album IGOR implements the same ruminative softness as Flower Boy, but with a sharper, more impatient tone. Songs like “RUNNING OUT OF TIME” and “EARFQUAKE” hold a sense of urgency and frustration within them, despite their lovely, somewhat delicate composition. While Tyler croons over a soothing melody in “A BOY IS A GUN”, his lyrics expose the harsh reality of a love lost to circumstance, a lack of understanding, and the ultimate heartbreaker: time. Gone from the cartoon world he normally inhabits in his videos, “A BOY IS A GUN” places Tyler in a luxurious, cavernous mansion, crying out to a boy who’s seen packing his bags and heading out the door. The sense of freedom that Flower Boy brought feels cut short in IGOR, as if a budding flower was plucked to be admired, only to die in your hands. His lyrics here are honest and brutal, and his videos once again position him as the outcast, alongside vibrant people and places. All five stages of grief, with some nuanced extras can be experienced with IGOR: infatuation, loss, denial, anger, depression, bargaining, eventual acceptance, and even gratitude. Each song details a saga of loves lost and lessons learned — cutting right to the heart as synths and horns cascade around them.
On the heels of these deeply transformative albums comes Tyler’s latest masterpiece, CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST: an exhilarating blend of the aggression and tenderness that Tyler has mastered. Love, rejection, and the terrifying uncertainty that comes with opening your world up to someone else are all catalogued here, amid his reliably intoxicating melodies. CMIYGL features an equal amount of optimism and cynicism, as he details a love story alongside musings about his career, his misunderstandings, and his heartbreak. In the video for “WUSYANAME”, Tyler begins telling a story but gets sidetracked when a girl catches his attention. A curious courtship kickstarts what will ultimately be a complicated love affair for Tyler, as he later reveals in “SWEET/I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE” that their love for each other made them blind to their flaws. In “WILSHIRE” he goes into more detail, how this relationship made him question his morals, his preferences, and his desire to go with the flow of the chaos, despite the inherent urge to swim against it. This metaphor of fighting against the current is used several times throughout the album, and within Tyler’s recent BET Awards performance we see a visual representation of this unrelenting struggle, as he makes his way through a powerful and violent windstorm. In many ways, this album is quite similar to Tyler’s earlier work — his anger, his otherness, his floundering through situations both mundane and complex are all on display. These themes are confronted, however, by present-day Tyler, as he reflects on who he once was, and who he remains to be.
There’s something eternally youthful about Tyler; his curiosity never ceases and his rambunctiousness shows through his lyrics, as well as his imagery. Lovely colors, fashionable figures, and dazzling destinations are staples in his music videos now, always presenting us with idealistic images that could only come from Tyler’s mind. Videos from Flower Boy, IGOR, and CMIYGL certainly feature some of the Tim Burton-esque qualities that defined Tyler’s earlier style, but he seems to have found a beautiful middle ground with his current aesthetic: somewhere between ridiculous and refined. The recklessness of Tyler’s early sound seems so distant from the reflective sensitivity of Flower Boy, IGOR, and CMIYGL, and from the man he’s grown into. Though his early lyrics make reference to control, money, dissing other rappers — no different from the lyrics of his contemporaries — Tyler has never exactly been a soldier for the patriarchy. His tone, while deep and intimidating, has never seemed authoritative or controlling. Tyler is playful, erratically imaginative, and has deviated quite far from the expectations of traditional manhood. If he ever makes references to masculinity in his videos and lyrics, it is within humor or hyperbole — forcing us to face the hypocrisy of something held so sacred.
The music Tyler, the Creator has released in the past five years is the personification of his anxieties and triumphs, and a clear representation of his growing comfortability with himself. Even as his image shifts from provocative oddball to artistic softboy, it’s wonderful to see Tyler’s unique brand of “weird” remain intact as he evolves as a creative force. Through his journey as a rapper and maturing adult, hints of his influence can be seen in performers like Lil Nas X, who through their music and imagery accomplish so much more than just self-expression, but a vivid and inspiring self-acceptance as well. We’re unlikely to see Tyler’s sense of humor or capricious attitude fade, but if his music is any indication of his growth as a human being, I couldn’t be more excited to see where Tyler’s journey takes him, and the music industry.
