Verse one: “My father’s dead / Well, I don’t know / We’ll never fucking meet.” Tyler’s universe was vivid and awful and ridiculous and terrifying from the opening seconds of the opening title track, in which he curses out the rap blogs Nah Right and 2DopeBoyz for not posting his music, pitch-shifts his already cavernous voice down to a sludgy crawl to play the therapist charged with plumbing young Tyler’s psyche, unveils a gorgeous horror-movie piano loop, and then unleashes nine verses of mortifying vitriol. I remember every detail of hearing Bastard for the first time, mostly because the details-drab office, lousy computer speakers-were so mundane. But it was Tyler’s own debut mixtape, brought screaming into the world on Christmas Day 2009, that defines Phase 1 in all its ferocious precision. Frank Ocean, the expanded group’s most soulful and mysterious member, brought Odd Future’s first phase to a startling and triumphant close with 2011’s unfathomably tender Nostalgia, Ultra. “When, after all,” Tom Breihan wrote for Pitchfork in early 2011, “was the last time you heard music that aimed to shock and actually succeeded?”Įarl Sweatshirt, who debuted with 2010’s Earl, had a deliriously macabre swagger and, thanks to his breakout hit “Earl,” the gnarliest video. But then, seemingly all at once, the group had a dozen free mixtapes available on Tumblr, and a priceless reputation as the hottest and gnarliest and most deplorable young artists on the internet. It took a few years for Tyler and his loose band of henchmen, first introduced on 2008’s The Odd Future Tape, to fully rise to prominence and sink to full-blown ignominy. (Some early OFWGKTA is transcendent much of it is “Goop on Ya Grinch” personified.) Yes, we will treat songs with titles like “epaR” and “ Assmilk” as sacred texts worthy of much earnest dissection. Yes, we will regard a nonstop torrent of homophobic slurs as a compelling artistic choice and not empty, witless provocation. ![]() Yes, we will add the stupid comma to Tyler, the Creator. collective by its full name, Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. Yes, we will refer to his sublimely chaotic L.A. He was all four horsemen of the apocalypse decked out in Supreme-branded horseshoes.Īnd thus did thunderstruck critics find themselves agreeing to his terms, playing by his rules. He combined underground-rap ardor with punk-rock fury, palpable analog hatred with abstract, Tumblr-borne virality. In 2010, Tyler, the Creator was the coolest, and angriest, and scariest, and most grotesque human alive, a virulent teenaged prodigy who left much of the internet both appalled and totally enraptured. It is very probable that he still has your attention anyway, despite everything, or maybe-definitely-because of it. It is very arguable that this person no longer deserves your attention, sustained or otherwise. Igor will likely take a dozen or so listens to fully sink in, very much by design-yet one more indulgence in a dazzling career composed of nothing but. Tyler, the Creator is an uncancelable supervillain for the cancel culture era, his myriad transgressions so monstrous and numerous that they somehow cancel each other out. Right? Maybe? What he’s craving, exactly, is still subject to much justifiably heated debate. ![]() So Necessary: Tyler, the Creator’s Playboi Carti Assist, Skepta’s Precision, and Megan Thee Stallion’s Realness We’re still getting used to the idea of a Tyler record that is not intended to cause actual bodily harm. The goal seems to be to knock longtime Tyler devotees off-balance, and what’s extra disorienting is that he’s no longer necessarily trying to pile-drive everybody into the ground. ![]() The song “A Boy Is a Gun” is lovelorn plea, not a gory massacre the menacing, clattering loops of “New Magic Wand” or “What’s Good” induce hypnosis but not hostile paralysis. It’s a hazy and grimy and suave art-rap excursion, packed with spectral soul samples and dusty one-man-Madvillain swagger, but turned inward, turned heavenward, vulnerable but also turned pointedly away. Igor, indeed, benefits greatly from your undivided attention. And then, as usual, the undercutting joke, though this one did not, as it usually does, involve the f-word or the other f-word: “Keep it timely tho I’m not tryna have an Oprah episode.” What a card. “If we ever cross paths, feel free to articulate what those moments were for you.” (Present company excepted.) “As much as I would like to paint a picture and tell you my favorite moments, I would rather you form your own,” he wrote in a brief, disarmingly genial Twitter message Thursday night, hours before the midnight release of the Los Angeles rapper-producer-impresario’s sixth full-length solo project. ![]() Tyler, the Creator would like it very much if you’d listen to his new album, Igor, in full, with no preconceived notions and no skipping around and no pesky distractions whatsoever.
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