With some careful editing and a couple of rewrites, it's not hard to imagine the album that could have been.īut let's talk about "WILSHIRE" now, because fucking jesus, what a song.
#TYLER THE CREATOR FLOWER BOY TORRENT PIRATE PLUS#
Plus it's not like the material here isn't crying out for a more careful hand in sequencing: most of these tracks seem borne from the fallout of the events described in "WILSHIRE", whether directly ("WUSYANAME", "SWEET", "CORSO") or in tone and emotional landscape (the more T talks about being fearless and blessed, the more one starts to wonder what it is he's avoiding saying). Why model albums after mixtapes instead of, y'know, just dropping a mixtape? It's particularly egregious coming from Tyler, who in the second half of his career has become one of the best at putting together a capital-A Album. It does a better job of doing this than, say, Kendrick Lamar's DAMN, but that doesn't make it a less frustrating choice. From the frequent (and ear-grating) DJ Drama interjections, short nasty songs and blown-out, aggressive mix, CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST is trying to conjure the spirit of a certain breed of 2000s mixtape. In total fairness, this feeling is clearly by design. What it delivers is a bunch of songs with little to no relation to one another, barring the fact that they were presumably recorded somewhat concurrently. This new aesthetic promises a lot, a globetrotting adventure with detours into surreal comedy and lovestruck meanderings, Tyler with a chip on his shoulder to prove he can spit with the best of them powering it all.
I wasn't let down there: gorgeous grainy film stock, Wes Anderson-worshipping cinematography, a hilarious skit called "BROWN SUGAR SALMON", it was all I could want from a New Tyler Era™. Then there's the fact that Tyler is, by far, the best self-advertiser in the business: when we all first learned about CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, I was almost more excited for the new era of videos, easter eggs and teasers than I was for the damn music. Flower Boy and IGOR excelled at weaving disparate threads into a satisfying tapestry even Wolf encourages you to make allowances for its filler with an interesting narrative. So why is it so damn unsatisfying?Ĭall it the burden of expectations, but the music reviewer in me still expects Tyler albums to feel like. This is undoubtedly his best work on a technical level, 50 minutes and change of thrilling hardcore heat. There's frequent flow switches, multi-syllabic rhyme schemes, a 7-minute near-unbroken torrent of bars which ranks as the greatest rapping he's committed to tape (and goddamn, I'll get to that song later).
People were wondering if Tyler was ever as good a rapper as he is producer/director/composer extraordinaire, and the performer on CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST clearly stepped in the booth hungry to prove that he was. It's been a while, right? IGOR's fragile, heartfelt narrative didn't leave a lot of room for pure rap you'd have to go back to 2018 loosies "POTATO SALAD" or "TIPTOE" to find T spitting bars as furiously as he does here. The beats are trunk-rattling, filthy foot-stompers, the guests deliver the heat (Lil Wayne and Domo Genesis damn near showing up the whole album with their features), and most importantly: Tyler is rapping the fucking house down. I'll lead with some positives - CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST slaps, in the true, down-and-dirty hip-hop-head sense. But I feel this way about the damn thing nevertheless – what's the point in acting otherwise? Should I start by saying it's a bizarre experience, to enjoy the majority of the songs on an album that I'm thoroughly disappointed by as a whole? That's probably too harsh, or my expectations on the cohesion front were set way too high by Tyler, The Creator's past, a burden it may be unfair to place on every LP he chooses to release.
Really, I don't know what to make of CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST at all. It's hard to know where to start on this one. Review Summary: The album I always wanted Tyler, The Creator to make, until he made it.