Tyler, The Creator - CHROMAKOPIA

It’s hard to think of an artist who has gone on such a steep learning curve, growing up in public and undergoing quite such an extreme personality arc, as Tyler, the Creator. At the end of his teens, he released debut solo records ‘Bastard’ and 2011’s ‘Goblin’ - the latter of which included the rape-glorifying ‘Tron Cat’, a song that saw him temporarily banned from entering the UK. 13 years later, however, and ‘Chromokopia’’s ‘Hey Jane’ sees the rapper delivering a thoughtful verse on female body autonomy, the set-piece in a track about an unwanted pregnancy that’s unrecognisable from how, you imagine, he might have dealt with the topic long ago: “You gotta deal with all the mental and physical change / All the heaviest emotions, and the physical pain / Just to give the kid the man last name? Fuck that”. Of course, 13 years is a long time. But the memory of what came before only serves to underline the emotional range of Tyler’s eighth: a deeply personal album that tackles ageing and possible parenthood (‘Tomorrow’), racial pride (‘I Killed You’) and his relationship with his father (‘Like Him’). Where the latter topic has regularly cropped up throughout his canon, here it ends with a snippet of closure-giving words from his mother Bonita Smith - “I’m sorry I was young, but he always wanted to be a father to you”; one of several times in which her presence acts as a guiding force steering the musician throughout these moments of reflection and discovery. Musically, ‘Chromokopia’ is just as vital. The glammy guitars of ‘Noid’ are amped up by a sampled vocal from ‘70s Zambian musician Paul Ngozi, lending a prowl and threat to a track about stalking and fan fear. The aforementioned ‘I Killed You’ tumbles along on barely more than a simple African drumbeat and sing-song backing vocals, while ‘Sticky’ (feat. Glorilla, Sexxy Red and Lil Wayne) is a straight-up banger. There are multiple nods across the record to Tyler’s own growth and desire to move past the decisions that defined his early career. “See, T changed like the ‘fit got dirty / I was young man, then a n**** hit thirty,” goes ‘Thought I Was Dead’; “That version of T you knew is a memory,” goes ‘Tomorrow’. ‘Chromokopia’ is not only a testament to the importance of allowing people to grow and change, it’s also - by anyone’s standards - a nuanced, creatively exciting document of a time of life in flux.