Tyler, the Creator - Flower Boy ALBUM REVIEW

Photo cred: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/
w/index.php?curid=54483116

If you had told me in 2016 that Lorde and Tyler, the Creator's new albums would be in my top 3 favorites of the year, I would've laughed at you. But yet, against all odds, here we are! If you're unfamiliar with Tyler, the Creator and why I should be so incredulous that I find myself loving his new album, Flower Boy, as much as I do, here's the basic rundown on him as an artist:

Tyler, the Creator is a LA-based rapper and producer, known as the main artist and de facto leader of the experimental, independent hip hop collective Odd Future (aka OFWGKTA). Prior to the release of this album, Tyler's career as a musician has been characterized mainly by an overwhelming sense of immaturity, primarily manifested in him focusing his music on cheap, insubstantial shock tactics: throwing hollow threats of homicide, patricide, infanticide, and other gratuitous violence; boasting about fictional rapes and other such misogynies; waiving around vague Satanic references and homophobic slurs; and otherwise trying to scare your mom as thoroughly as possible. These topics got him labelled, by some, as a "horrorcore" rapper, a subgenre of hip hop usually reserved for the most unpleasant, hedonistic rappers. However, unlike the scarier artists in the horrorcore genre, the teenage Tyler's shocking persona wore away very quickly.

I mean, it was kind of scary at first, on his debut mixtape, Bastard, in 2009, when the then 18-year-old Tyler was still shrouded in a layer of mystique and anonymity. But upon the release of his first full-length LP, Goblin, in 2011, it became painfully clear that all the talk of killing and eating people was just a flimsy act, one which he himself became very quick to break, to make sure people knew it was all "fiction" and to "not do anything that I say in [these songs], okay?" as stated in the intro to the song "Radicals," on that album.

After hearing this album, I really lost interest in Tyler, the Creator. Which I honestly thought was a shame, because, even though I've always been turned off by his gratuitously unwholesome subject matter, I always thought him an extremely talented rapper and beat producer, technically speaking, and that he had real charisma, behind the goofiness and cartoonish violence. Also, to his credit, I never felt like Tyler's villainous persona from those days was pure "fiction:" I thought the violent, hateful lyrics mostly served as an outlet for Tyler to express his very real, intense angst about his love life, anxieties, and especially his upbringing. But, even in spite of these things in his favor, the once-captivating Tyler, the Creator just seemed to deflate before my very eyes, continuing on with 2013's Wolf and 2015's Cherry Bomb.

Golf Wang. Photo cred: http://respect-mag.com/2017/07/tyler-creator-keeps-vintage-performs-911-late-show/

So, yes, believe me: I am as surprised as anyone to be sitting here today, in 2017, naming his new album Flower Boy as one of my favorite albums of the year. So what changed? In a word: EVERYthing. No one knows why, but seemingly overnight, Tyler, the Creator, the musician, has completely changed. Without any warning, he has dropped the hate, the violence, the anger, the misogyny, and most of all the fakeness that permeated his past work. He has killed off his persona of the past. In its place, Tyler gives us an album full of incredible sincerity, self-awareness, and real emotion. He shows us his sensitive side. He raps about loneliness and inadequacy. He sings about love and longing. Heck, he sings, which we've never heard before. I mean, the name of the album is Flower Boy for crying out loud. In short, it feels like we're finally seeing the real Tyler, unafraid to surrender at last to his genuine self.

And in being "his genuine self," he is really still the same Tyler we've seen hints of all along, behind the tough guy mask. He is still very, very depressed and anxious, even pessimistic, as on the opener "Foreword," where he wonders aloud "How many cars can I buy til I run out of drive? How much drive can I have til I run out of road?" He's still goofy and distracted, like on the skit track "Sometimes...." He still gets angry and aggressive, like on the single "Who Dat Boy." I mean, he's still him, in the best way--he's not saying, "I don't want to be the old me, so I'm going to cram myself into a box and call it the new me." He's just finally being his naked self. In fact if anything, after dropping his tough guy shell, Tyler seems more willing than ever to expose to us the full depths of his troubled, depressed, often suicidal mind, in ways that his therapist character on past albums never could.

Musically, this album is also a pretty vast departure from Tyler's past work, generally speaking. In contrast to the more harsh, aggressive instrumentals of his past work, most of the production on Flower Boy (with the main exception of "Who Dat Boy") is much gentler, warmer, even happier, to compliment Tyler's more introspective rapping, and his and the guest vocalists' singing. I mean, "See You Again" sounds like a straight-up alternative R&B ballad, something that would fit comfortably on a Frank Ocean album. This is something I never would've expected from Tyler. 

Swag. Photo cred: https://www.highsnobiety.com/2017/07/20/tyler-the-creator-flower-boy-album-title/

And finally, you really can't talk about Flower Boy without talking about what was perhaps the biggest surprise of all: Tyler comes out of the closet on the album. Now, I mean, this is 2017, and entertainers revealing to the public that they are homosexual is usually nothing to write home about, in and of itself, and indeed, an artist's sexuality shouldn't have any bearing on a listener's reception of their work. For me, though, Tyler coming out was shocking because, until this year, he has been pretty unapologetically homophobic in his speech and lyrics, particularly in his love for the word "faggot" as a slur to be used against his enemies. 

Tyler coming out, and of course, abandoning that part of his speech with it, felt to me like Tyler's ultimate victory over fakeness. Tyler tells us on the Flower Boy track "I Ain't Got Time!" that he's been "kissing white boys since 2004." Tyler is fully embracing in himself something he had once scorned and derided, and in doing so, displays an incredible amount of bravery and maturity--risking being called a hypocrite or even being told that he's not actually homosexual, he's still just being a massive troll, lying about this to make his biggest attack on the LGBTQ community yet! Which, yes, unbelievably, has happened. To be so comfortable with this aspect of himself at last that he is willing to risk that kind of backlash shows a maturity that I don't think most people have. Make no mistake: Tyler is still in emotional turmoil throughout the album, but at least with this one facet of his kaleidoscopic identity, he seems finally at peace.

So, when I listen to or think about this album, honestly, the one word that comes to my mind is "victory:" Victory over insincerity. Victory over violence and vengefulness. Victory over self. Victory over the stigma, in hip hop culture, that "real" rappers must never be invulnerable. Victory over the immense weight of fame and the expectation to be who you've always been. Tyler, the Creator, with these 14 tracks, destroyed all of those barriers that had been holding him back. This album is as rich and dense and as complicated as a human being. I'm glad that human being is, specifically, Tyler, because I've always been fascinated by him and his potential. The future has never looked brighter for Tyler Gregory Okonma and the sunflower-laden hills stretch out wide before our hero, the unabashed Flower Boy.

OVERALL SCORE: 9.5
Tyler, the Creator – Flower Boy
1. Foreword 2. Where This Flower Blooms 3. Sometimes... 4. See You Again 5. Who Dat Boy 6. Pothole 7. Garden Shed 8. Boredom 9. I Ain't Got Time! 10. 911 / Mr. Lonely 11. Droppin' Seeds 12. November 13. Glitter 14. Enjoy Right Now, Today	O!HTT's COLORFUL SCORING SYSTEM 9-10 Holy. Crap. You must hear this song. One of the best of the year. 7-8 I'm so glad I have ears so that I can listen to this wonderful song. 5-6 Yeah, it's passable. Contributes to the vibe of the album, but not anything to write home about. 3-4 Ehh very mediocre or seriously flawed, there's a lot better music out there, or even on this album. 0-2 Good gravy, why must this song exist? One of the worst things that will enter your ears this year.