Four years ago, a Grammy-award anomaly hit the vinyl stores and into the hands of the impressionable global audience. IGOR, one of the many gritty symphonies by rapper-producer Tyler, the Creator, still holds as one of the most rule-bending albums of this generation. IGOR was a rebellious response to Tyler’s previous work Flower Boy; while Flower Boy was a crisp and clean stroll, digestible enough for the media to understand, IGOR craved and invited explosive bass, gross mixing and just weirdness. There’s really no explanation for IGOR. Tyler Okonma didn’t have an epiphany in a dream. This isn’t a connection with God – he isn’t a prophetic prodigy. More so, he is a giant music nerd, enveloped with a passion for the details and finer ends of sound as a whole. Music is his life (as he said in his senior yearbook quote). But the way he expresses it – that is what captivated people for so long.
For reminder, IGOR is a 11-song story about Tyler going through the heartbreak of falling out in love. His crush, an unnamed man, had left Tyler in fragments, pulling and pushing him into certain mindsets. The songs don’t build to a climax – rather, its the starting point. Beginning with feelings of desperation over his love leaving, to the middle point of rage and almost obsession, to finally a peace out, suitably at the album’s end. Through each song, there is a moment when the lurking synths come about, often accompanied with dark lyrics, bringing the mood to ebony. Tyler lays sugary piano and harmony vocals on top of this developing fear, whether for the audience or himself is uncertain. The sound of IGOR has a run in the middle where the momentum of each story seems to carry him forward emotionally. And during these moments, Tyler is at his most artistic, and more abrasive.
The off-putting structures and audio cues with a mix of sweet melodies; this generally hasn’t been heard before, at least not in this limelight. Somewhere, within his musical journey, Tyler seemed to get jaded with traditional music. “…if you figure out specifically what you like about something, that’ll help you understand other [things] that you like and then weed out the [stuff] that you don’t and find other [things],” Tyler says in an interview with producer legend Rick Rubin. The regular chorus-verse of every pop song was no longer exciting. The songs needed to be taken somewhere. And this album proves that a journey can be made through chords and harmonies and crescendos. In addition to this, to have this play only once within any point of any song brings a craving to the ear, to Tyler’s ear. All the songs are an amalgam of various samples, picked for perhaps its drums, chords or general aesthetic and created for a world. It is all set in a scene, a familiar scene. Every song, to every listener, can be familiar due to the samples, yet distant due to what has been done to said samples. It creates a dissonance within the mind. It’s weird. Non-traditional. Exhilarating.
Since this, Tyler has put out Call Me If You Get Lost: The Estate Sale, a deluxe album towards his 2022 of the same name, Call Me If You Get Lost. Within this, he seems to find himself more and more as the albums roll by. Except this isn’t an album. Inspired by the early 2000s rap scene, Okonma seemed to create a mixtape. No longer holding the audience in a chokehold of intense synths, this counterpart takes a U-turn into an island getaway, filled with lovelorn, sweet tunes and the boisterous voice of music industry giant DJ Drama. The differences between all his albums leading up to this seem to all be incorporated into this album. This is a mix of everything Tyler is. It is a richer version of his previous work. Quite literally his magnum opus. And the best part is? He, in the eyes of the public, is just getting started.
