Are These Tyler, the Creator’s Best Beats Yet?
Leave it to Tyler, the Creator to drop a kinetic album meant for Harlem Shaking (as in DJ Webstar, not the EDM song) at the crack of dawn. Less than a year after baring his deepest insecurities behind a mask on Chromakopia, Tyler has already reinvented himself, this time in the mold of ’80s era rappers—big glasses, even bigger rope chain, bright monochromatic fits—with Don’t Tap the Glass, his leanest and most muscular album yet. If Chromakopia felt like an urgent expression of fears, anxieties and regrets, Glass (which dropped yesterday at 6 a.m. Eastern, as part of Tyler’s ongoing mission to break the new-release-Friday mold) wants us to get up, move, pop-lock the crust out of our eyes and dance like no one is watching, and not give two fucks even if they are.
An album titled after the warning you might see in a zoo or aquarium where people go to gawk at fascinating creatures confined in a display would suggest Tyler was going to continue down the track he started on last year’s “Noid” and its themes of paranoia, anxiety and the nonexistent boundaries that come with being a celebrity. But he makes his intentions crystal clear on the opening track, with an ad-lib that promises “none of that deep shit.” Welcome to Tyler’s Vibes Album.
The idea of being watched is still prevalent here, but instead of dwelling on it, this is Tyler’s soundtrack for ignoring it, moving freely despite being behind the glass, as he explained in a note he shared after an impromptu, fans-only, no-cameras-allowed listening party in LA last night. “A natural form of expression and a certain connection with music is now a ghost,” he wrote of friends, presumably celebrity peers, explaining that they don’t dance in public for fear of being filmed. “It made me wonder how much of our human spirit got killed because of the fear of being a meme.”
Off the first five or so spins this morning—seriously, the album is under 30 minutes—the thing that immediately jumps out is an even greater emphasis on melody and instrumentation than his previous records. And in pursuit of this mission to make people move, Tyler might’ve hit a new creative peak behind the boards.
The vintage LL Cool J fit on the album art and the first accompanying visual kind of tells you where Tyler’s head is at, but the reference points range far wider, all in service of one underlying goal: energy. There are grooves on here that he’s explored before—“Sugar on My Tongue,” for example, vaguely recalls IGOR’s “I Think.” And Tyler’s perennial underlying Neptunes/NERD influence still reigns supreme. But it’s all dialed up to new, muscular levels. (This album probably came together too quickly for the ever-busy Clipse to turn in a feature, but their cameo in the “Stop Playing With Me” video is such a tease—they would’ve tapped into their “Like I Love You” flows and danced all over this beat).
