On the early morning of Oct. 28, Tyler, the Creator dropped his highly anticipated eighth studio album titled ‘Chromakopia’. Public reaction to his new music has been met with high energy and has resonated with many of his fans, some of them even claiming that this is his best album yet. However, some are skeptical as to whether or not it holds up compared to his other Grammy winning albums.
“You are the light, It’s not on you, it’s in you, Don’t you ever in your life dim your light for nobody,” Tyler, the Creator’s mom voiced over in ‘St. Chroma’.
The first eleven seconds of the first track ‘St. Chroma’ starts with an audio clip of Tyler, the Creator’s mother, Bonita Smith, telling him to never dim his light for anybody. This sets up the chorus of the song, which includes supported vocals by Daniel Caesar, about Tyler, the Creator’s insistent need to let his light shine.
“Can you feel the light inside? Can you feel that fire?” the chorus of ‘St. Chroma’ sang.
In fact, the significance of the title and new album alter ego, ‘St. Chroma’ was quickly recognized as a reference to The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. Like St. Chroma, the character in the novel named Chroma the Great, creates music and is tasked with conducting the sunrise and the sunset, similar to the lyrics portraying Tyler’s urge to let his light shine. By being able to create a character based on children’s stories and relate it to his work goes to show how creative Tyler is when creating a storyline that his albums commonly follow.
Although, for this album, St. Chroma is the closest to Tyler’s real self, as he explained to his audience during a listening party. This track as the intro to ‘Chromakopia’ serves as an amazing prelude, its connection to literature letting the audience know that it will be filled with stories of St. Chroma and Tyler, the Creator’s life.
“Don’t you ever stop bein’ who you are and dimmin’ your light.” This was one of the other voices Smith added to her son’s track.
The third track on the album, ‘Noid’ fleshes out the paranoia Tyler, the Creator experiences from having such a large presence in the music industry. As we have seen with Tyler, the Creator’s previous song, ‘Colossus’, he is not particularly comfortable with his fans making a big fuss about him when he’s trying to do mundane things like eating in a public space. ‘Noid’ reaffirms this point on a more heightened level since between the time his album ‘Wolf’ came out to now, he has gained much more recognition and fans.
“No cameras out, please, I wanna eat in peace, Don’t wanna take pictures with you, Nervous system is shook, way before nineteen, LA’ll do that to you.” Tyler sang in ‘Noid’.
Tyler begins stating within the first few lyrics that he feels as if he is unable to leave the comfort of his home without a camera on him and that he feels like people are always waiting and watching for the moment that they can surveil his every move. This leads to Tyler feeling genuine paranoia about everyone that enters his life, feeling that they just want something out of him because of his fame or his fortune. This track is a fantastic extension of Tyler’s thoughts and feelings about fan interactions with the addition of the emotional weight of being such a large public figure.
“Paranoid, paranoid, paranoid, Things feel out of order, Look and look around, I’m not sure of, Pair of paranoia, no, Feel it in my aura, Living between cameras and recorders” Tyler, the Creator wrote in the first verse.
The album jumps into a familiar emotional depth with ‘Take Your Mask Off’ featuring Latoiya Williams and, once again, Daniel Caesar. ‘Take Your Mask Off’ revisits the topic of hiding behind a mask as Tyler speaks to an audience of the man who Tyler might have become, had he never explored his deeper feelings. Tyler remembers himself earlier in his career when he was desperately seeking validation from hyper masculine figures by pretending to be macho.
“You ain’t a thug, you was in drama club, you’s a actor, But now cuz gettin’ validation from the dumb and confused” Tyler, the Creator sang about previous his desires to perform.
Tyler then paints a picture of what his life would have looked like if he never was true to himself. Tyler goes on to state that if he had never written songs about his more complex emotions, that he would not have ended up as successful as he is now. While ‘Take Your Mask Off’ is not the most streamed track on ‘Chromakopia’, the emotional depth to which Tyler goes really leaves an impact on the audience, especially those that enjoyed listening to ‘Igor’, by singing about his own past fears of expressing himself freely.
“Now you facin’ five to ten ’cause you had somethin’ to prove, let’s talk about it, And I hope you find yourself, And I hope you find yourself , And I hope you take your mask off.” Tyler, the Creator versed about his life in this song which was followed by the chorus.
Some of the best tracks on ‘Chromakopia’ serve as mature extensions of Tyler’s earlier work. With the album’s twelfth track, Tyler revisits his ‘Wolf’ album again as his song ‘Answer’ is forever changed by the events in ‘Like Him’; where he struggles to grasp that his appearance is similar to someone that he has never met, his biological father. Tyler’s lack of connection with his dad has been a large contributor to his music, enabling him to write about his pain about his father leaving his mom to raise Tyler, the Creator by herself.
“Mama, I’m chasin’ a ghost, Do I look like him?” rang out as the central chorus.
As the end of the song closes in, a clip of Tyler’s mom can be heard explaining her part in his father’s absence and asking for forgiveness. It is revealed that Tyler’s dad wanted to be a part of his life, but his mom decided that it would be for the best to raise him by herself. This song is particularly meaningful to a lot of Tyler’s fans because of their own strained relationships with their fathers or other parental figures, so it is not hard to see why this is one of the most streamed songs on the album.
“It was my fault, not yours, not his, it was my fault, I’m sorry, Not him, ’cause he always wanted to be there for you, And I’m sorry I was young, But he’s always wanted to be a father to you” Smith said at the end of the song.
A large part of what sets Tyler apart from rappers is his exploration into emotions and genres after emerging from a previous reputation of shocking lyrics and an overly edgy persona. Many great rappers explore emotional depths, but Tyler’s variety in genre alone truly shows his versatility as an artist. ‘Chromakopia’ was anticipated to be another great Tyler album and it did not disappoint. While the album was a little bit different from his previous works, the mix of different genres worked very well together to fit different areas of Tyler’s emotions, expressing his ups and his downs in the fourteen songs on the album.
