This year has had possibly the greatest run for rap music releases, with albums dropped by huge-name artists like Kanye, Future & Metro Boomin, Eminem, 21 Savage, and Kendrick Lamar, to name a few. However, by far the most significant album drop was by Tyler, the Creator, who dropped his latest project, “CHROMAKOPIA,” on October 28..
Tyler has been on a generational run the past decade, with his last 3 albums being Flowerboy (2017), IGOR (2019), and Call Me if you get lost (2021) having possibly one of the greatest catalogs in music right now. Of these past 3, the last 2 of them won a Grammy for Best Rap Album. With this in mind, the quality of Tyler’s newest work had great expectations and he definitely fulfilled them.
The rollout for this album was perfect. Tyler teased the album on October 16th with a snippet and music video of the first track “St. Chroma.” This generated so much hype and had everyone excited for what was in store. Following this, he kept up the trend with another snippet and music video of “Noid” track 3, and “Thought I was dead” track 11 of the album.
The night before the album was released, Tyler held a listening party in the new LA Intuit Dome (where the Clippers play.) Tyler has always been great with album rollouts, which I truly appreciate since Kanye and Playboi Carti have been promising projects all year and not delivering.
Now, let’s get into the music itself. The album is 14 tracks, and roughly 53 minutes long. I love how creative Tyler gets with each album, making a whole new vibe and theme. No album of his feels the same. The theme of this album is heavily influenced by Kendrick Lamar’s “Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers,” which was a personal, emotional concept album – a different direction in the genre.
Tyler, being close with Kendrick, loved this idea and decided to make this next album a heartfelt and personal journey of himself and his life experiences, vastly different from his previous project.
The album is narrated by his Mother, Bonita Smith, who helps not only tie the whole project together, but it emotionally connects it with Tyler and the themes he covers, which has a lot to do with his childhood and his relationship with her as a single mother.
Tyler’s “character” of St. Chroma in this album struggles with paranoia, love & freedom, identity, abandonment, and mental health. In the song “Noid” Tyler expresses how he is paranoid about always being chased around by fans and paparazzi, which he has expressed in the past. In “Darling I” featuring Teezo Touchdown, (who does fantastic by the way,) Tyler expresses that he has no want for falling in love and that he feels more complete with his music at the end of the day. (Grammys to be specific.)
In “Take your mask off” the 9th track, he issues the norm of how people live with “masks” on their faces and personalities, (a reason why his character St. Chroma is seen with a mask on the album cover,) saying “I hope you find yourself, I hope you take your mask off.”
His most significant track on Chromakopia is “Like him,” the 12th track of the album. This song explores how Tyler never grew up with a father, believing he was abandoned, but never knew until late in his life that his mother actually kept his father from him. Tyler compares himself to his father, asking: “do I look like him?” and saying “Mama, I’m chasing a ghost,” the person who isn’t there; his father. Just wow.
This song is “Ghost Town” by Kanye level beautiful. (Sorry, I know I glaze Ye too much.) The vocals, (especially Lola Young near the end,) the production, just everything; so good.
The features on this album are all perfect, and not a single one goes to waste. From Daniel Caesar to Teezo Touchdown, to the hidden Childish Gambino feature in track 6: “I Killed You”, to Doechii, etc. They all bring their A-Game.
Most specifically, the song “Sticky” track 8, featuring GloRilla, Sexyy Red, and Lil Wayne is one of the most unique songs on the project. The song is very weird at the beginning, but the verses by the features come out of nowhere but are really cool. It’s one of those songs that are unironically really good. The same thing goes for “Balloon” track 13 featuring Doechii.This song sounds silly but is actually a banger underneath the carnival sound.
The production on every song is just phenomenal. At this point, I’m going to run out of synonyms for the word “good” because of how just great this album is. In a ranking of all of Tyler’s albums, Chromakopia is top 3 for me. It’s not his best project, but he keeps the same consistency from his last projects all the way through, and I fully expect a “Best Rap Album” Grammy for this when it gets nominated next year.
