Tyler, The Creator has always innovated every step of the way throughout his career. If you listen to his older music, it’s hard to imagine that that kid grew into what Tyler is today. A lot of artists stagnate seven albums in—Tyler innovates. Read our Chromakopia Review.
Okonma has grown so much as an artist and a producer from the jump. That’s always been the best part of Tyler’s career. He changes the formula almost every single album while keeping with tradition that fans can still latch on to. Every single album he’s released has been two years after the previous album, and every album since Goblin has contained a track combining two tracks with a “/” to denote them. Chromakopia breaks both those trends, and it’s clearly intentional.
There are also the characters that Tyler creates through these albums. His characters are all versions of himself—they represent certain parts of him that come out through his albums. Chromakopia features one such character. The album cover is in black and white and features Tyler wearing a mask (which he references later on) with a suit. It’s unclear what he’s calling the character but people are speculating that it is Saint Chroma (also the title of the first track of the album).
Chromakopia is Tyler at his most vulnerable. Tyler’s always been somewhat open about his life but he digs even deeper on this album. The themes of the album revolve around his current life and his fears for the future specifically in his love life.
“Noid”, the lead single off the album features the best production on the entire album. It introduces a key theme in the album, Tyler’s paranoia. He’s paranoid of everything. Getting killed, his privacy, his love life, etc. What really works about this track is how it progresses into a fantastic final verse with a pitched-up Tyler voice that is his best rapping on the entire album.
“Darling, I” is a beautifully poignant track that comes in early on. Musically it’s such a brilliant track. Teezo Touchdown adds a fantastic chorus and Tyler uses the verses to go over his love life. He depicts his struggles to settle down because of his fear of commitment. “He wraps Life is short, but forever is so goddamn long/I like a long time, I’m on my own time”. He’s stuck in the cycle of imagining his future life with the person he’s with only to find himself falling for someone else entirely, rinse and repeat. In a way he wants that for the person he’s with too—for them to experience and explore for themselves.
The following track “Hey Jane” refers to Hey Jane, a website that provides abortion-related healthcare services to women. It’s a pretty somber track with the calmest production on the album. The first verse goes over Tyler’s fear of Jane being pregnant. He’s scared of committing to Jane forever and having to raise this potential kid. They don’t know each other yet, he’s convinced it’s too early. Jane’s perspective is then used in the second verse. Like Tyler, she’s also scared of everything surrounding the kid. She feels like she can have the kid and wants to but is scared of both potential decisions.
This reminds me of J. Cole’s “Lost Ones” where a similar conversation takes place. Like this track, it also features both perspectives of a couple finding out that the woman is pregnant. The difference is that “Hey Jane” sort of has a calmer conversation and it fits the album perfectly depicting the fears Tyler has.
These 3 tracks are what make the album move. They come back-to-back-to-back and really drive the album forward.
Perhaps the best thematic track on the entire album is “Take Your Mask Off”. He tells people to take their masks off and to be themselves—something he’s clearly struggling with himself. He’s sort of picking apart hypothetical lives of people while in a way talking about his own. The album is very contradictory in that Tyler is all over the place. Sometimes he’s being very shallow flexing his wealth and other times he picks that apart while being his most vulnerable self. He’s wearing the mask and this album is the idea of taking it off and being himself.
The second half is noticeably weaker than the first. There are two tracks in particular that don’t quite work for me. “Sticky” has an annoying chorus while not giving any of the features enough time to shine as they only get 4 bars for each verse which isn’t enough to really care. “Balloon” is another one I’m not quite a fan of. While the song itself is just okay, it doesn’t add much to the album itself. It’s a track that easily could’ve been cut and there would be no difference to the album.
There are some other really dope tracks in the second half like the outro “I Hope You Find Your Way Home”, “Take Your Mask Off”, “Like Him” and “Thought I Was Dead” but overall the first half of the album just works better. It’s way more consistent and is some of Tyler’s best work. The features in particular bring it down. ScHoolboy Q, and Daniel Caesar are some fantastic additions but Doechhi, Lil Wayne, Sexyy Red, and GloRilla just don’t add enough fuel to the fire to propel their respective tracks. Tyler also isn’t able to make up for it.
While there are some things I wasn’t a massive fan of, this album is still a fantastic piece of work. It might not be Tyler’s most bold album, it might not be his most innovative album, but it is his most vulnerable thus far. That aspect really does power through. There’s so much to love about Chromakopia, and I’m very curious to see what Tyler’s next step forward is going to look like.
Best Song: “Darling, I”
Weakest Song: “Sticky”
Chromakopia is performed, written, produced, and arranged by Tyler, the Creator. The album is now available on all major music streaming platforms. Listen to it below via Spotify:
Thank you for reading our Chromakopia review, for more music reviews, stay tuned here at Feature First.
