![]() ![]() ![]() If Tyler is nominated again for his new Call Me If You Get Lost, this line of reasoning will not apply. When I hear that I’m like, ‘Why can’t we just be in pop?'” “I don’t like that urban word - it’s just a politically correct way to say the N-word, to me. “It sucks that whenever we - and I mean guys that look like me - do anything that’s genre-bending or anything, they also put it in a rap or urban category,” Tyler told reporters at the ceremony. While expressing gratitude for recognition at such a high level, he also pushed back on the rap categorization, calling it a “backhanded compliment” rooted in racial stereotypes. Tyler would tell you as much, and on the night he won his Grammy for Best Rap Album, he did. If anything, the album was the sound of Tyler going pop and doing it in style. Often, as on the album’s transcendent single “EARFQUAKE,” he did so by bursting into song. The album was a tour de force, voyaging through synthetic funk and soul, brisk organic post-Daft Punk bombast, hard discordant trap beats, and so much more as Tyler unpacked his feelings for a man who became his lover only to go back to his ex-girlfriend. Not that it contained zero rapping whatsoever, but Tyler, The Creator’s 2019 stunner veered further than ever from the queasy, aggressive, jazz-tinged hip-hop he made his name on in Odd Future’s salad days. After the success of IGOR, Tyler took a solo joyride: “Bought another car ’cause I ain’t know how to celebrate.” A chapter-closing gift for fans, The Estate Sale is a lake house afterparty.Don’t let the Grammys fool you: IGOR was not really a rap album. The cover of The Estate Sale depicts Tyler in a similar position-gazing into the distance, suitcases in hand-though he would probably call them valises now. An estate sale insinuates the death of its owner: death of preconceived notions of success, death of ego, death of self-destructive nihilism. When I first heard Tyler associate himself with his Baudelaire persona on Call Me If You Get Lost, I didn’t think of the French poet: I thought about the orphans at the center of Lemony Snicket’s children’s novels A Series of Unfortunate Events. Constantly on the run, they’re never in one place long enough to unpack their suitcases. Twenty seconds into original album track “Massa,” a drum beat cuts Tyler off when he begins to idolize his passport. “Heaven to Me” diverts that incomplete thought with a tender ode to domesticity-date nights, water-gun fights, loved ones in the kitchen, and seeing a piece of yourself in the children you helped to bring into the world. On “Sorry Not Sorry,” he glimpses guilt and helplessness about not leveraging his status for Black liberation: “I can’t save niggas/I’m not Superman, but I could try.” On “What a Day,” he shouts out Black women, especially the ones who raised him. He brings back his love for ’80s synth-funk on “Boyfriend, Girlfriend” and taps into New Orleans bounce and Southern trap across “Dogtooth” and “Stuntman.” A$AP Rocky gushes about spoiling his lady on “Wharf Talk,” while Tyler croons with the angst of his Flower Boy and IGOR eras. The breezy and soulful “What a Day” and “Heaven to Me” bring in a John Legend sample and an unreleased Madlib deep cut to complement the album’s leisurely, jet-setting atmosphere.Īs he adjusts to the altitude, Tyler’s position as a community leader presents itself as a new source of anxiety. The stylistic adventurousness of The Estate Sale offers insight into the sounds that would become Call Me If You Get Lost. Tyler’s own biting, almost Pusha T-like inflection over the New Boyz-type beat could’ve spawned a dance trend in the early 2010s. Fellow Californian Vince Staples rides into “Stuntman” like he’s behind the wheel of a monster truck: “No, you can’t be my girl, bitch, are you dumb?” If you have beef, he suggests you duel him in Milan-if you can afford the flight, that is. As he’s evolved in his artistry, he’s replaced shock value with boasts whose imagination and precision-“I got a jelly bean, Kelly green Rolls/And the guts off-white like a jalapeño”-are almost outdone by the Goblin-like freneticism of his delivery. ![]() In his early years, Tyler could be something of an edgelord, delivering violent lyrics about sexual assault through a mischievous grin. ![]()
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