This Christmas will mark 15 years since Tyler, the Creator released his debut album, Bastard. Watching Tyler grow from the talented kid who idolized artists like Pharrell to working in the same rooms as some of his idols has been amazing to see. And even with all of that growth, it wasn’t until the release of his eighth studio album, CHROMAKOPIA, that we got to see the man Tyler has become start to truly understand what his mother had been teaching him, which in turn finds Tyler reflecting on what life is truly about.
On this episode of Dissect, Cole Cuchna and frequent guest Camden Ostrander share their first impressions of CHROMAKOPIA, including the themes and sounds from the album, the inspiration behind the album’s title and concept, and a look at Tyler’s thoughts from the listening party he held in Inglewood on the eve of the album’s release. Read an excerpt from their conversation below:
Cole Cuchna: I just wanted to read a quote quickly for those that haven’t seen the video clip, but essentially at the listening party in Inglewood on Sunday … he wanted to talk. It started as him wanting to talk about his childhood, growing up in Hawthorne, and giving us some details that we just don’t know about his life, growing up specifically. And he said that turned into him just taking a bunch of things that his mom had told him as he was growing up and kind of letting those influence or inspire some of the subject matter of the songs.
And then he says this quote, talking about what his mom told him, he said, “I’m 33, and all of this stuff is like, ‘Oh, that’s what she was talking about.’ I’m not the guy who I was at 20. People are getting older, folks having kids, starting families, and all I have is a Ferrari. I got a gray hair on my chest. Life is life-ing, and I don’t know. I just wanted to write about stuff that I think about when I’m dolo. I’m happy you all got to experience it in my hometown.” So yeah, it’s very much someone approaching middle age. His last album was all about luxury, traveling, spending, eating, and it felt like time is less of a luxury to him now and him realizing that time is our only luxury maybe, in some sense.
Camden Ostrander: OK.
Cuchna: It’s kind of a classic existential, he’s not midlife, in the classical sense, but it feels like when you grow older, you just don’t have the decisions, or the lack of decisions, start to weigh a little bit more heavy. So when you’re thinking about, “Should I have kids or not?” It’s like when you’re 25, that’s a different question than when you’re 33, and there’s just a little more weight to that consideration, and it just feels like he was taking a pause and just really kind of reflecting on where he is and where he wants to be and where he’s going.
We’ll talk a little bit more about that as it pertains to the idea of light, I think is the main motif of the album. Obviously starts and ends with this idea of light, how to preserve your light, and to me, that kind of meant, at least at this point, it feels like his mom says, “Don’t dim your light for anyone.” And there’s a purity of your own light when you’re a child. And I feel like as you get older—and this is something I often think about—is how to preserve, I don’t think about it as light, but on the album, it manifests as light as the essential kind of symbol. And how do you preserve your light as you age?
As you start making choices because you’re a certain age and you feel like you should have kids, or you’re getting pressure to have kids. You should be at this point in your career, and you’re not. And you start to sacrifice some of yourself because of certain pressures, whether it’s familiar or societal. And it’s like “How do you stay true to yourself as you age?” was something I’ve been thinking about actively as I’m listening and considering this album, which is a pretty powerful theme. And it goes into this idea of a mask and the roles that we’re playing to appease whoever it may be, and how do you maintain who you are as you age? It’s a pretty powerful question I feel like the album is asking.
Ostrander: Yes, Cole. Damn. I mean, when I’m thinking about … as far as these themes, I’m looking at it like this is a couple years ahead of me, so one of my feelings with this album is like, “Oh, I got to do that?”
Cuchna: It’s coming. Yeah.
Ostrander: I got to do that in a minute? So that makes a lot of sense. I wonder, too, if that deals with the theme of paranoia coming up on the album, him worried about protecting himself and what he has versus what he could do still. Him talking about protecting himself is a big deal on this album or how he could, or if he should be doing it to the extent that he has for so long. All of those things, I think they work together. Yeah.
Cuchna: Yeah. And I think, in terms of what he said about reflecting on his childhood and sharing a little bit more about that … he kind of pivoted. It started as that, and then it kind of ended up being this other thing.
But the paranoia of the album, I think he was trying to link it back to growing up in Hawthorne. I forgot on what song. There’s a line where he says something about growing up and people ask, “Where are you from?” Essentially, you know what I’m talking about?
Ostrander: Yeah.
Cuchna: And that paranoia kind of just never leaving him.
Ostrander: A bit of him because of where he is from. Yeah, that’s just something that’s always been in him, a trauma he’s always had to deal with sort of thing.
Cuchna: Yeah. And that only kind of exacerbating once he had more things to protect.
Ostrander: Right.
Cuchna: So yeah, it’s not the album I was expecting. It was such a left turn for me … and maybe I was looking too much into the rollout. I know that now, not that I regret it, it’s very fun to do that. But yeah, the theatrics of the rollout just is a complete U-turn in terms of such a vulnerable album, and a vulnerable album throughout.
On my first listens, one of the things I was thinking about was there’s a version of this album where a lot of the more “accessible” songs are front-loaded, and a song like, “Hey Jane,” is buried toward the back, and it gets the vulnerable stuff more toward the end.
Within the first [five] songs we have “Hey Jane,” and that kind of turns the album in this different direction, and then it kind of oscillates between almost one-for-one, vulnerable song with a more bravado, upbeat, traditional rap song. There’s a lot of the oscillation going on throughout the album, which I thought was cool and interesting in terms of … he could have made a more commercially appealing album had he front-loaded it with songs like “Sticky” and “Thought I Was Dead.”
All those being more upfront, starting with a lot of energy and letting it taper toward the end with the vulnerable stuff. But it was very clear he was trying to be very honest, and it seems like that was the main through line.
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