Album Reviews

Hours before its release, Tyler, the Creator tweeted a set of listening instructions to anxious fans about to hear his new magnum opus IGOR. “This is not Bastard. This is not Goblin. This is not Wolf. This is not Cherry Bomb. This is not Flower Boy. This is IGOR. Pronounced eee-gore. Don’t go into this expecting a rap album. Don’t go into this expecting any album. Just go, jump into it. I believe the first listen works best all the way through, no skips. Front to back. No distractions either.”

No matter how you listen to it, IGOR is an album that demands the majority of your attention, and more importantly, fully deserves it. It defies nearly all expectations for what a Tyler, the Creator album “should” sound like, even after the leap in maturity that was his jazzy, neo soul-infused 2017 masterpiece Flower Boy. This is not like any of his previous work and this is not a rap album either. Far behind Tyler are the days of Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (commonly shortened to Odd Future or abbreviated as OFWGKTA), his collective that included other notable members such as Frank Ocean, Earl Sweatshirt, and Syd tha Kid. Gone are the days of Tyler crafting offensive lyrics about rape, violence, and homophobia simply for shock value to “piss old white people off.” If anything, IGOR is his Kid A if Flower Boy was his OK Computer.

Throughout the album, Tyler uses the character of IGOR (to be clear, he tweeted asking the character’s name be typed in all caps) to essentially distance himself away from himself. Not only is the story being told from IGOR’s perspective, but Tyler rarely sounds like Tyler as we’ve previously known him. Here, his voice is laden with heavy distortion and pitch-shifting effects, and he even sings at times, which for him is rare. In addition, his fashion in the promotional music videos is different; instead of colorful streetwear from brands like Supreme or his own GOLF WANG, Tyler is filmed wearing light colored suits, dress shoes, rectangular sunglasses, and a blonde bowlcut wig. Further, the album cover is the first where there’s an image of Tyler sans hat (unless you count the illustration on the main cover of Cherry Bomb, but one of its alternate covers does show Tyler in a hat). From what we’ve seen of this album cycle so far (music videos, album, and an intimate live show streamed on Apple Music), Tyler is consistently taking on the character of IGOR, using it as a self-expression tool as well as a narrative vehicle.

Even some of the (few) guests don’t sound like they normally do in other settings; Philly autocroon rapper Lil Uzi Vert appears on album opener “IGOR’S THEME” sans Autotune, and sings surprisingly well. Kanye West’s “PUPPET” verse sounds as if it was recorded on a busy street using an iPhone microphone, making most of his lyrics difficult to decipher. Jack White’s guitar solo on “Are We Still Friends?” has less distortion than his usual sound. Not revealing IGOR’s full credits until a week and a half after the album’s release was a brilliant move that allowed listeners to remain fully immersed in the music rather than being distracted by the many guest appearances that instead serve as additional textural enhancements to the escape from reality Tyler creates on IGOR.

Not only is this album brilliant in every way, but it also made history. After IGOR shot to #1 on the Billboard 200 chart (beating the scam that is salty DJ Khaled’s Father of Asahd), Tyler became the first solo rapper ever to have a self-produced and arranged #1 album with no co-producer credits at all. To think that one person did more than 95% of the work on this album makes it even more impressive. In comparison, Kanye West’s Yeezus (an obvious influence on this album) has 24 producer credits. West’s 2015 single “All Day” has a whopping 18 songwriter credits, not including the sample, while the 12 tracks on IGOR have a combined four songwriting credits (including features), not including samples.

Album opener “IGOR’S THEME” may not seem like an integral part of the album, but it sets the tone for and even refers to songs later in the album that better support the narrative it explores (more on that in a minute). Particularly, Lil Uzi Vert repeatedly sings “ridin’ round town they gon’ feel this one,” a reference to the following song “EARFQUAKE.” Feel this album we sure did. What “IGOR’S THEME” is to IGOR is what the opening credits are to a movie; it begins to introduce the story about to unfold. A cinematic opener makes sense, as IGOR is a musical experience incorporating a powerful, evolving narrative even surpassing that of the aforementioned Yeezus.

“EARFQUAKE,” our first true glimpse into the story that unfolds throughout IGOR, begins with multitracked vocals singing “For real/For real/For real this time,” and you can’t help but wonder if Tyler’s confirming that the love he later explains is real or if he’s questioning it. Due to the duality of many aspects of the LP, I believe he means both. Because of that duality, IGOR is in many ways like a story where the majority of it is already written but the most important details are in a “choose your own adventure” format, altering the meaning of the pre-written parts. “EARFQUAKE” is also one of the first times where the lyrics foreshadow significant events that occur later in the album; in the following track “I THINK,” the hook is “I think I’m falling in love/This time I think it’s for real.” Again, is he confirming that he’s in love or questioning it? Given the direction the story takes, assuming both makes the most sense.

Many aspects of IGOR remind me of the works of his (sort of) mentor and fellow master rapper/producer Kanye West. West is known for integrating full cinematic narratives throughout many of his albums, and also for using duality to better build up those narratives, specifically on 2016’s The Life Of Pablo. 2013’s Yeezus used a great deal of foreshadowing throughout its similar 40 minute duration, but Tyler takes these ideas even further. While Kanye raps a lot on those two albums (both of which are among my all-time favorites), Tyler paints the complete picture with fewer words. He knows what to say and when to say it; in other words, he picks his few words carefully. Some of Kanye’s lyrics on Yeezus and Pablo can easily come off as rushed and occasionally cringe-inducing, but Tyler has none of those problems on IGOR. The closest thing to that would be the “my eyes are green, I eat my veggies” line on “NEW MAGIC WAND,” but more on that later.

I guess I got a bit off track by talking about duality, foreshadowing, album narratives, and IGOR’s similarities to Yeezus and The Life Of Pablo, but this information is essential to understanding the rest of the album. Anyway, back to the rest of “EARFQUAKE.” Tyler, in a vulnerable high-pitched vocal, longingly sings to his lover (later revealed to be a man) and asks him to stay with him: “You make my earth quake/Ridin’ around, you love is shakin’ me up and it’s making my heartbreak/Don’t leave, it’s my fault.” (Charlie Wilson (best known to older readers as the former lead singer of the Gap Band) also provides backing vocals on select parts of the hook.) At the song’s precise halfway point, Playboi Carti mumbles an indiscernible guest verse (the “mumble rap” couldn’t be more fitting in this case), before we hear Tyler without effects for the first time on the album, nearly six minutes into its 40 minute duration. “I don’t want no confrontation, no/You don’t want my conversation/I just want some confirmation on how you feel, for real.” Tyler hiding his natural voice until over halfway through a song is something unique to this LP, but does nothing but introduce more varied sounds and help the narrative. On Flower Boy, Tyler purposefully minimized his rapping to ensure everything he said had true meaning. Here, he is maximizing his minimalism.

Surprisingly, Tyler originally wrote “EARFQUAKE” in 2017 with the intention of handing it to Justin Bieber (“I just want to write pop songs,” Tyler said at the Apple Music concert). Bieber thankfully turned it down, and so did Rihanna. Yet, “EARFQUAKE” really couldn’t have been made by anyone but Tyler, the Creator; it’s an artful pop song that bears his signature too much to have been made by anybody else. It’s too pop-oriented to be classified as a hip-hop song yet it’s too experimental to be a full-on pop song, which is what makes it such an exceptional composition. Despite this, on the topic of Bieber turning down “EARFQUAKE” Tyler still said, “Justin’s stupid”.

Remember how I earlier mentioned the Kanye West influence? Well, “I THINK” is the most obviously Kanye-influenced IGOR song. The synths sound exactly like those on West’s 2007 hit “Stronger,” but “I THINK” is likely to hold up much better in the future than the dated sound of Graduation-era Ye. Despite the synths, however, “I THINK” is an important part of the album. The hook (with backing vocals from Solange) is “I think I’m falling in love/This time I think it’s for real.” Once again, you can’t help but wonder if Tyler’s confirming the love, questioning it, or trying to convince himself to think it’s real (the answer is all of the above, obviously). Is “I THINK” the least important song on the album? Probably. But are there any bad songs on it? Not even close.