Albums Of The Year: Tyler, The Creator Makes Us Taste Heartbreak On Igor

Every year since Tyler, the Creator made a cockroach into a gourmet meal in his disturbing 2011 “Yonkers” video, the rapper has become more charismatic, serpentine, and, notably, more human. Much of Tyler’s early subject matter because the frontman of Uncommon Future was disgusting – designed for maximum offense from conservative listeners. Although he matured after awhile and stepped away from this modus operandi following his absurd debut studio album Goblin, and also you could hear how his 2019 collection Igor stands because the product of years of improvement. It’s the entryway to another leg of his career, defined by emotional experiences best understood through sonic experimentation alternatively opposed to shock value.


Tyler made weird regular, although Igor is fucking bizarre. It zooms in on a relationship’s demise and frames it around his rollercoaster of emotions, revealing a more personalized and nuanced understanding of him than ever before.


There’s some sort of cosmic irony in the fact that, at the height of his commercial bankability following a Grammy nod for Flower Boy and being the front of the music from The Grinch in 2018, Tyler delivered his most twisted, artsy delight — something he strived for, although never quite executed any time while he was greener around the gills. Nevertheless this time, he showed each person. Most importantly, he showed himself.


In the two years between Flower Boy — defined by its textures of love, loss, and identity — and Igor, Tyler largely took a step back. Soon after four albums, what more could Tyler have to mention about being misunderstood, behind hinting at his open-ended spectrum of sexual attraction, and defining obscure relationships that made him into the person that he is today?


He turned to heartbreak. Igor is boldly stubborn in its pursuit of fixing a heartbreak, moving on from decrying a lack of love in Tyler’s life to centering itself around love’s rancid aftertaste. It simmers in insecurities and confusion, evident on “I Think,” in which Tyler spills about an intense passion without consideration of an argument that’s destroyed his understanding of their relationship. “I don’t know where I’m going / Yet I know what I’m showing / Feelings, that’s what I’m pouring,” he raps as he spills alcoholic beverages that he’s preparing to down, desperate to feel good whenever he strangles his emotions.


But where the R&B albums that inspired this one make use of words to describe feelings, Tyler uses Igor as an idealistic playground for what relationships sound like. Not the heart-swelling piano strings of first kisses or slow-moving violin strings of heartbreak, nevertheless disembodied voices stroking an alien groove and icy, electric vibes snatched out of a time machine.


obviously, you can hear the screaming apology buried in the sweet instrumental of “Earfquake” (and the literal “don’t leave, it’s my fault” that comprises of the chorus) or get lost in the kaleidoscopic attraction of “I Think.” Yet Tyler wants you to hear it, breathe it, smell it, and feel it all sort in attempt to experience the emotions that carry the story. At its heart, Igor is what splitting up feels like before it actually starts, wrung through 12 songs that explore the finality of the decision. Tyler goes deep into this messiness as it impacts his psyche. The mood is an anxious one; there’s the threat of an ending with every backward glance and disagreement.


On “A Boy Is a Gun,” Tyler bellows at his partner to “stay the fuck away” with increasing anger. On the follow-up “Puppet,” Tyler he starts with “I aspire talk, I'd like to call you and talk / I'd like to walk to your front door and knock,” as if he didn’t just forbid them from being in his presence. It’s an one-of-a-kind experience that contradicts itself, just as love does.


The LP’s last leg, nevertheless, crystallizes a hard-won acceptance, with tracks like “Gone, Gone / Thank You” and “I Don’t Love You Anymore” finding him metaphysically shaking his partner’s hand and sending them off to have a good life. It can conclude with “I Don’t Love You Anymore,” although Tyler doesn’t even sound sure of himself by the end. The second time he repeats, “But this just might be better for us, you know?” It’s apparent it’s more for him than for us, giving the full LP a shaky feeling.


With a cast of Kanye West, Solange, Playboi Carti, Lil Uzi Vert, Slowthai, and others, Tyler tells a heartbreaking story that’s more upfront and personalized than anything he’s ever done. He never confirmed if any of it was real, nevertheless he didn’t have to. It resonated with fans fully, garnering widespread important acclaim and becoming Tyler’s first No. 1 album on the Billboard Hot 200, moving 165,000 album-equivalent units in its starting week. It proved that there’s traces of Igor in everyone’s story.


At the starting of the decade, Tyler, the Creator embodied an idea: that anarchy festered in all of us. His early horrorcore music held traces of the musical genius that would slowly evolve, paving the way for him to open up about himself in ways that no one could have predicted. On Igor, Tyler loses himself in his own looming heartbreak so that as soon as it finally comes, you crash into funkadelic hell as well as him. You wonder if he has recovered although. Then, wonder while you ended up in the hole, too.