Tyler, the Creator's Life Comes at Him Fast on 'Chromakopia'

You’re going through it, I’m going through it. And if you pressed play on Tyler, The Creator’s new album expecting respite in the form of tightly crafted bars about luxurious misadventures and upper-echelon taste levels, well—plot twist—Tyler is going through it too.

At the risk of speaking in Stan Twitter terminology and invoking “eras,” you can always expect a new Tyler project to come wrapped up in a specific aesthetic, delineating a new chapter if not a full-on new character, an approach he’s gone full-speed on since 2019’s Igor. But the album that followed two years later, Call Me If You Get Lost, was for the most part, Just Plain T, reveling in Rolls Royce Cullinans, new yachts, a tatted passport, and a life too charmed to even really be that disturbed by heartbreak.

It’s been three years since that album dropped, his longest break between projects, and thus, an extended period of living with that particular Tyler, the Creator iteration—the one that felt the least theatrical. So his new effort Chromakopia—first teased two weeks ago and released yesterday—is a somewhat startling return to character. Don’t ask me what to make of the costume, the location emphasis on hangars, tarmacs and ports, the haircut—but off the first couple of listens, Tyler’s clearly working through some heavy angst and insecurities behind that St. Chroma iron mask.

Debuting the new music Sunday night at a listening event in LA’s Intuit Dome, Tyler explained that the early idea for his eighth album was for it to be an homage to the very streets we were standing on in Inglewood—after an album about the joys of getting lost in new places and opening oneself up to exploration and different experiences, this next project was going to be a celebration of his home, with an eye toward his formative years B.C. (Before Cockroach.) Instead, Chromakopia morphed into the album version of a vacation hangover, coming home to find the real world and all its stresses lying in wait.

For Tyler, those stresses take the form of maturity and mortality—imagine him stepping into the foyer of one of his mansions, Louis trunks at his feet, and remembering there’s no one waiting to welcome him back. In the same way that a breakup drives most of Igor and a weird third-wheel situationship colors Call Me If You Get Lost, Chromakopia seems to revolve around Tyler facing a pregnancy scare, the shock of anxieties and harsh self-assessments that came with it, and the subsequent decision to not follow it through. Whether that’s through medical means or emotional distance—or if this whole scenario is just a completely imagined circumstance rooted in real angst—is never really clear. What’s clear is that being in his early 30s with nothing to show beyond cars, cribs and critical acclaim has been weighing on him.

“Hey Jane,” which pitches a two-verse conversation between Tyler and a partner whose test strip just came up positive, is the apex, but the mood persists throughout the entire record. Songs like “Rah Tah Tah” and “Sticky” (which sees Tyler out-WeTheBest’ing DJ Khaled with an all-star lineup of GloRilla, Sexyy Red and Lil Wayne) offer brief flashes of good ol’ fashioned stunting, and it’s great to see Doechii’s star continue to rise as she holds her own against one of her stylistic forebears on “Balloon.” But overall, this might go down as Tyler’s angstiest record to date. Yes, he’s rapped, quite notably, about loneliness and growing up fatherless before—but now he’s wondering if a life of awards and unrestrained creativity is all that awaits him; the spectre of an absentee dad is coloring his own thoughts about fatherhood and whether or not he’d be well-suited for it.

The last verse of “Take Your Mask Off” scans as a blistering rant of self-loathing vitriol that, if read correctly, retroactively complicates the image of the carefree jet-setter we’ve seen for the last three years. Even “Darling, I”—an upbeat early standout (and the requisite Neptunes 2005-inspired track) that has Tyler trading breezy harmonies with Teezo Touchdown—finds him seemingly making peace with the idea that his art will ultimately always be more fulfilling for him than the idea of a family. Three years ago when a romantic situation didn’t go his way, he bragged about being rich enough to buy new emotions and “a new boat, because I’d rather cry in the ocean,” one of the all-time illest flexes put to wax. But now A$AP Rocky is a father of two past his days of being available for studio goof-offs and Parisian stunt-interludes, his Odd Future brothers are branching off into their own fully-formed careers (Lionel Boyce gets a nice shoutout on “Rah”) and Tyler… has his Grammys. Listening to this album reminded me of that one Entourage season premiere that ended on a downer note with Vince at the height of his career sitting in a dark empty house.

Igor and Call Me If You Get Lost cast long shadows as two of the best albums of the last five years. But there’s something appealing about the urgency of Chromakopia—taken together with his explanation on Sunday night, it feels like these are ideas he simply couldn’t sit with much longer. It may not feel as fully formed as his last few projects ( it’ll be interesting to see what more listens—and windows into the narrative informed by more visuals and the coming tour—reveal), but at the risk of offering up pleas, the author also seems to be copping to that right here on wax. I hope he finds himself.