Goblin was so great, from conversations with psychologists, to white girls who fuck you when black girls won’t, to emails to absent fathers, Tyler, The Creator was a creation of urban strife in a created community (for demographic reasons) Ladera Heights, who spoke to teenagers everywhere. Voice of a generation for a year or so. Nah, it’s not Compton, but once you’ve said that…
It had the sense of a realness beyond the gangsta and millies and billies we are inundated with. Plus the samples were dark, the raps were smart, the tone was scared, and the album was big. Tyler was an everykid and rapped like an every kid, insecure, lonely, puffing on weed and paranoia, with just his Grandma between him and the world, and a sense of being disrespected he could not even…
Four years later and the only thing that remains is the dark samples. From first single “Fucking Young” which sounds like Stevie Wonder with a made up problem. If Tyler was 23 when he wrote the song, and she is six years younger, that makes her 17. Mick Jagger would spit in his face. The song isn’t bad and the segue into “Perfect” sounds like obtuse jazz burns on your wrist.
“Smuckers” is better, with a solo piano trickling in before Tyler intones “money money money…”, a trope by the numbers he used to be, with a rap right out of Adultswim, on one verse Kanye brags (“richer than white people with black kids” andand name checks Jerome, and Lil Wayne adds a strong verse as well. It is pretty good though it isn’t pretty great.
But the rest of the album isn’t quite good enough, it is pitch dark for no apparent reason, and while the beat on “Deathcamp” the rap snarls and the screams are out of the school of modern rap, a review mentioned the Stooges and I see their point, the lyric is a closed circle, as is everything Tyler seems to do. There is more than one hard rock sample here, and Tyler sometimes does to rock what Earl Sweatshirt does to jazz. He is a quantifiable man and a unique sound who doesn’t owe as much to Pharrell as people complain (a song here and there). The crassness drags me, “The Brown Stains of Darkeese Latifah Part 6–12 (Remix)” is better than the name suggests -but so are most things. I love Tyler’s voice, I love it here, but his humor is not sophomoric, it is pre-potty training, and it puts me off.
After awhile it sounds like Tyler has been analyzed out of his charm, and now he has lost part of what we loved him about him (maybe he lost it on Wolf), maybe he misses Frank Ocean. He hasn’t had a song as good as “She” since “She” (or at least “Her”) -Frank isn’t even on this album.
Tyler is the Steve Earle of rap, or do I mean Pharrell (obviously, N.E.R.D.s is an influence, but not for the rapping) -a hugely gifted guy, who read the reviews. Synths and strings, dark and light, dick jokes and no hopes, money, pussy… a real disappointment but it is still Tyler, still the voice, still the deflated attitude, and still some very good songs. Just not the future of rap or the voice of his generation.
Grade: B
