Tyler the Creator ‘Call Me If You Get Lost’ Album Review

Ten years ago, Odd Future – a motley group of artists, skateboarders and pranksters hailing from Southern California – stormed the doors of the rap game without the backing of the majors and popular bloggers who, for a time, have acted as intermediaries between listeners and the endless stream of new music available online. The group’s open disregard for taste makers and stars runs counter to the charm offensive that made you a career in hip-hop back in the day, when Legends were built a blog post. , a famous co-signer and a guest spot at the same time. Odd Future was a stand-alone unit housing all of the rappers, singers, and producers needed to make records. The members played an important role in each other’s songs, taking a page from the Wu-Tang playbook in the quest for domination. As cranky as they are clever, the collective has built a vast and impressive catalog of pungent songs that prey on icons, idols and influencers from top to bottom. After studying and genuinely internalizing the pressure point stimulation of Eminem, who earned his millions in part by identifying and uttering the most provocative statements possible in any given scenario, Odd Future led a campaign of transgression. deliberate that elicited as much support as outrage but, more importantly, used the attention to highlight the stellar craftsmanship of its members. Over time his art blossomed and his sensitivity softened, but the group broke up.

In Odd Future’s de facto frontman Tyler, creator’s biting new song “Manifesto” – a long-awaited reunion with talented stoner rapper Domo Genesis from his former team – he revisits the heat of the moment where his band performed. exploded and mass outrage ensued: “To protest in front of my shows I gave them the middle finger / I was a teenager, I tweeted some crazy stuff from Selena / I didn’t mean to offend her, I apologized when I saw her. The cut traces Tyler’s growth from an aspiring internet troublemaker to a live artist picketed at his own concerts and banned in overseas countries to polymath limitless creative 30-year-old today, he curiously returns in the grumpy and carefree style and attitude of his early days as he explains all the ways he has changed since then. Call me if you get lost, Tyler’s sixth true studio album, is a complete moment where the lighter, more moving aesthetic of the 2019 Grammy winner Igor are reduced in favor of brash rhythms and crude rhymes. Call me takes shape a little after the Gangsta Grillz mixtapes from the 2010s and early 2010s, where veteran DJ Drama whispered into rap hooked up with a who’s who of rap royalty, scoring classic bands like Jeezy’s Trap or Die, Lil Wayne Dedication 2, and Pharrell In my mind (the prequel). DJ Drama energizes Tyler throughout the album as the rapper, producer, director, actor and designer revel in comfort, opulence and exquisite taste, sated but no less mean. It’s like flipping through old yearbooks, laughing at how small your youthful worries seem now, but quietly missing their simplicity.

Where the goal with Igor seemed to be stretching Tyler, the Creator’s compositional abilities to their limits, Call me if you get lost follows the string of rap loosies he’s released since the last album, putting Tyler back in touch with his ever-formidable foundations. He’s one of the coldest word blacksmiths who works when he wants to be. It’s shaped like a boat here. “Massa” reflects on struggling before fame and battling the pitfalls of fame as Tyler reveals his mother was living in a shelter when his single “Yonkers” landed in 2011. He details the unsettling feeling of being vilified by strangers in a jumble of sneaky rhymes: “You can’t relate to those things I say to these instrumental / Whether it’s wealth talk or shit that is painful / I paint full pictures of my take a look at those drum breaks / Just so you can tell me :, ‘from your lunch break. Going back to full-time rap means finding a way to provoke listeners without resorting to Bastard and Leprechaun, where Tyler made a concerted effort to offend anyone who took himself too seriously and succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. He has come to count powerful figures like former British Prime Minister Theresa May among his enemies and has been widely criticized as one of the preeminent homophobes in the music industry, before revealing in 2017 flower boy that he goes out with men. The challenge here is to display the good things without appearing materialistic, to bitch without being ungrateful, to goad without spilling blood. Tyler, once known for his jubilant swear words, now bristles at the word “bitch.” But “Manifesto” proves that his famous loathing for organized religion remains intact, and throughout the record you can hear him grappling with stereotypes and preconceived notions of Blackness. The gangly and gangly teenager Bastard is done now, but it feels like there is still a chip on his shoulder.

To his favorite, Call me takes after “You Can Do It Too”, the In my mind cut where Pharrell launches fleet rhymes about success and urges listeners to pursue their dreams like he made his own. The “Lumberjack” sale boasts of having sold-out arena shows and owning several businesses with memories of being a high school nutcase that no one took seriously. “Massa” ends with Tyler taking on the brunt of his responsibility to his fandom and the sometimes cranky nature of his public figure, then making sure to offer encouragement to fans who might see him as a role model: “I feel like all that. i say, man i fuck shit / so i just tell these black babies they should do whatever they want. (note that’s almost exactly the same message he was selling two albums ago. To quote flower boy‘s “Where this flower blooms”, “Tell those black kids they could be who they are / Dye your hair blue, shit, I will too.”) Maturity comes and goes, though. Call me is just as likely to settle for just thumbing his nose at enemies, yawning on boats, and cruising in expensive cars. Listening to rappers flex on a record is often an inspiration in itself, in the same way some people watch porn and imagine themselves in the scene. Our para-social relationships with these artists allow us to be proud of their achievements, but it can become risky when the record calls. you broken. Call me largely bypasses that kind of annoyance, opting instead for a dizzying joy that even Tyler’s mother participates in when she appears in the interlude “Momma Talk”, poking fun at the parents, teachers and principals she has been against. beaten to defend her son in primary school. What Call me if you get lost lacking in freshness, it makes up for with gorgeous sounds, well-placed samples, and entertaining fights with rappers and guest singers.

Look between the many detailed descriptions of Rolls-Royce interiors, beautiful boats and international travel, past the half-dozen passport mentions, and you’ll find a love story. Call me if you get lost introduces a new alter ego on its cover and intro. The nickname Tyler Baudelaire, presumably a reference to the French poet and critic Charles Baudelaire, an extravagant spendthrift who wrote passionately about love and lust and faced accusations of obscenity when his work released la most memorable, 1857 The Flowers of Evil (The Flowers of Evil). Like Baudelaire’s “Une Charogne (A Carcass)”, a detailed and grotesque meditation on the interconnectivity between decay and growth in nature, Tyler’s music strikes an unsettling balance between beauty and ugliness. There is the juxtaposition of loudspeaker noise and crisp soul-jazz that anchors the underrated Cherry Bomb album to use a deep, gruff vocal tone to sell cute melodies in songs like Igor‘s “New Magic Wand”, Wolf‘s “Response” or flower boy‘s “Garden shed”. Likewise, Call me spices up his crass words and confusing productions with a trio of songs about a romantic relationship that has deteriorated. “Wusyaname” is a sweet, innocent encounter narrated on a time-lapse sample of the horny car jam from Houston R&B trio H-Town “Back Seat (Wit No Sheets)”. Later, “Sweet / I Thought You Wanted to Dance”, Tyler’s traditional ten-part track, skillfully alternates between funk, bossa nova and reggae as excitement turns to regret. Towards the end of the album, “Wilshire” goes bankrupt and details a case of the artist falling in love with a friend’s girlfriend, and how and why the guilt-ridden duo of betrayal ended. the case. So the story of Call me if you get lost it’s not just that Tyler is comfortable in his prosperity. It is this jet-set insider who is denied access to the thing he craves the most.

Call me if you get lost contrasts with various points in the career of Tyler, the creator. The emphasis on rap sounds like a cue to the forward melody Igor. The presence of Domo Genesis and DJ Drama recalls the first releases of Odd Future as Radical from 2010, the year Tyler tweeted that he wanted his Gangsta Grillz record. The mirror of love songs flower boy, the last time the artist spoke about her love life in so much detail. (Igor covers loves the way pop songs often do, informed by a writer’s lived experience but broad enough to connect with a large audience, which is different from the first person narratives and revelations of “I Ain ‘ t Got Time! ” and “Garden Shed.”) Then he gestured towards a secret same-sex romance that he felt he couldn’t reveal to the world. Here he wants to be open and candid about his feelings for a woman, but falls into the old patterns. It is not easy ; navigating the romantic flow can make it harder for a person to understand who they are. Some people spend their lives struggling with this. Tyler speaks in “Massa”: “Everyone I’ve ever loved had to be loved in the shadows / Tug-o-war with X and Y felt like a custody battle.” The monologue at the end of “Wilshire” says more: “I’m crazy on this side of my life because people are weird, and I’m just trying to keep everyone I love out of the picture, out of the blue. away from the comments and the spotlight and the thoughts because it’s just a story for people outside of that.

As much as Call me if you get lost is a bookend of the yearning for acceptance, care and richness that characterized Tyler, the Creator’s earlier work, it is also a catalog of the obstacles that accompany climbing the mountain peak . You can spend your summers on a yacht on Lake Geneva. You can be friends with Lil Wayne. You can have your actions, ideas, and love interests sorted and reviewed. You can become the object of confusing rumors. What to offer to the man who has everything? Peace and calm.