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#their previous albums dealt a lot with self acceptance i guess
liamloveslarry · 3 years
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wormmomma · 4 years
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tyler, the creator: the very queer discography review!!!
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Im bored of writing overly long threads on twitter so i wrote a look at tyler the creators discography and why hes gay and im gay and deserved to have his dick immortalized in gold when he dies. So tyler gregory okanma is a black man born in ladera heights california. He’s also my third favorite rapper and since he discovered my favorite rapper earl sweatshirt I guess he deserves goat status for that shit too. Tyler started his career around 17 years old as the ace the creator. He did features at the time with casey veggies and the inspirations in his flow to mf doom where already apparent even back then. From ace the creator mixtape you can already hear the very digital and jazz inspired pharrell production. Funny story if you look up any of his ace stuff now you'll mostly find some really old production that in the age of tyler the creator type beats doesn't really hold u all that great. From there Tyler went on to create odd futures and his first album bastard. He quite quickly followed up bastard with godlin. Goblin, bastard, and the OF tape vol.1 all feel pretty interconnected so im gonna speed round from worst to best. So odd future tape volume one is fun and punk and really crass, it's also completely eclipsed by odd futures other releases. I love odd future and the collective's ability too be both edgy teen skate rap garbage, and a risky artistic rap collective all at the same time. In odd future's first tape it seems pretty clear that tylers description of the groups early work as a bunch of niggas joking around in a studio is very apparent for better or worse. If you wanna get high with some friends can listen to some funny edgy and downright grimey tracks over left brains booking production skip this and listen to odd future's next mixtape but come back here to listen to some funny skits and a few proto mellowhype track with domo genesis. Goblin is Tyler's attempt to do a bigger darker more sprawling version of bastard but misses the mark. I like the album and I love singles on the album. Goblin the opening track is amazing and is a great look at tylers mental state attempting to live up to his newfound fame and anxiety about his infamy. I love yonkers and tron cat. Tyler says alot at this time that he doesn't make horrorcore and he's correct but the lack of emotional honesty and his immature deflections is really going off on all cylinders. If you dont wanna hear skits like “my bitch suck dick” and lines like “im not homophobic faggot” i would probably call it his worst album. Before i talk about bastard id like to go over his use of slurs and rape in his work. Tylers consistent lyrics about violence towards women and use of the lgbtq community really don't insult me. I feel like his lyrical content is filled with a clear look of how angry and insecure tyler was about not having a father or any way of processing his angst. Did he have to sound like a incel threatening to stalk and murder women who refuse to love him for over 3 albums? No, but i really enjoy looking at his early music. He doesn't shy away from how angry, sad and desperate he was at the time. That synthesis of need for fatherly love, anger from a lack of it and deteriorating mental state honestly makes the content more palatable. Also as a black trans women id rather hear tranny an faggot bars from a male rapper making intreeating music. Tyler at the time was being honest, angry and vulnerable not like eminem and action bronson who spit these bars with all the same rap bravado and violent anger toward women with zero pathos. Bastard is amazing, it's an intimate dark album. At the time it felt like it was tapping right into where I was at the time. The amount of mental anguish on bastards opening track really hit me. I was an angry kid with a lot of angst and bipolar disease so hearing a rapper yell about that same dysfunction really meant alot to me. The flows are amazing and it was a really good look at tylers ability to build a narrative. Wolf was tyler's next album. For a while wolf was my favorite album by tyler. His look at relationships and breakups on bimmer and ifhy are amazing and are expanded on his future releases. Find your wings and treehome are also a good look at his more melodic influence. It was such a good album I actually bought the mrech for and went to see Tyler at afropunk. Also hearing an entire song about the death of his grandma really hit me, my grandfather died around the same time. Cherry bomb was bad, now moving one. Ok im  joking i've listened to it two or three times but its really not worth going back to even though tyler put his all into it. The soul features and amazing production is worth listening to but even Tyler admits he rushed the album a little and that he needed to blow people away next time. Flower boy, is one of the most important albums in hip hop. That's it. Bar none. It was my favorite release of 2018. Flower boy is about tylers newfound isolation with his fame, and how he drives cars by himself in beautiful la vistas. Its also about how he’s gay (or bisexual). There are ALOT of stupid takes on this album. There is a contingency of tyler stans that think tyler has been “playing a character” since bastard. Now I'll admit that wolf haley and dr.teecee are clearly characters; they are also artists' representations of tyler's mental state. If wolf haley has adhd and no father that means tyler also has those issues. So whether or not Tyler is playing a character he has in fact “been kissing white boys since 2004”. I also have seen an insipid article that asks if “tyler the creator should be accepted into the lgbtq community” due to his homophobia? Much more controversial and actually homophobic and transphobic people are in this community hes tyler the creator, not milo yinnaoplous. I also dont think that it occurs to the reviewer that alot of gay men are very hmophobic before they come out and that self hate is very common. Lyrics like “im not gay i just wanna dance to some marvin” also has a much deeper context now. Listening to older releases you can see how in your face tyler was about his queerness. He even said he filmed himself kissing his friend Lucas to prove he wasn't a homophobe. I'm happy Tyler grew enough to make an album not only about being attracted to men but how lonely he felt in and out of the closet. As someone who came out as bisexual at the time it came at a perfect time. Being  gay is isolating and confusing and when you do you lose alot of friends and family. Garden shed, who dat boy, and 911 are real standouts. His collaboration with kali uchis was also so fucking smooth and she a born r&b star. Tyler gained a grammy nomination off the album and said he loved the feeling of finally making popular catchy music people wanna sing the lyrics too, so he followed it with igor. Igor opens with this addendum on the back of the physical album: 
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This might be fiction, this might be about igor but it is fully about tyler okanga. The album is very hard to parse and barely has any rapping. It's more of a pop experimental album with a lot of lofi synth production. Tylers production chops are full force here. Igor is melodic, sad and full of the same anger and obsession from his previous albums. Its just more mature and really gay, and i fucking love it. Tyler was dealing with a tumultuous relationship with a guy and his refusal to be with tyler exclusively. Its about a breakup. A love tragedy that only becomes more depressing after the argument on a boy is a gun, the breakup in my love is gone, and the sad slump back into needing closure in can we be friends. The album is fun to sing to, and fucking devestating. I've dealt with a lot of similar issues with love and obsession so to hear it so clearly illustrated on igor really hit me. I think the album becomes even more depressing with the unreleased track best interest, about tyler being a side nigga. This is the kind of music that's sometimes made in r&b and pop but never in rap. There was an interview where Tyler says he hated his voice which is why he edits it so evident on igor. Tyler also said he wanted to send these songs to rihanna and Justin Beiber but they didn't want them, as cool as it sounds. I'm happy tyler was able to tell his own story. I would also recommend magic wand since it's my favorite track on the album and kicks you in the face with how angry and heartbroken Tyler was at the time. 
Tyler is an artist that talks and speaks about how he feels all the time, he's also a person who feels enigmatic and mysterious somehow. I think it has to do with how constantly he's put to the side of his other hip hop contemporaries. He always seems to be making music Tom weird, controversial and experimental to be treated like asap rocky, vince staples, or the late mac miller. A fact that feels ironic since he worked with all of those artists, lil wayne, and even kanye west. I'm as big a stan for tyler as he is for Pharrell, if it wherent forever I'd never take rap seriously and would never have chosen to make my own music. As a black trans woman I find a lot of tylers work really relatable. I've been in alot of the angry hopeless situations Tyler talks about in his music. I think he's the artist who hits me the most on a personal level and yeah when i was depressed i sat in my bedroom and listened to bastard in my low moments. I like riding in the car and listening to all of flowerboy. Igor is amazing as well for almost half a decade it's been amazing growing up and hitting the same emotional beats Tyler went through5 in his work. Hearing about him coming out as gay ajd dealing with very similar backlash mad me feel less alone if im being honest. Tyler has said he wants to take a more production heavy role in the industry moving forward but he says that a lot, i think as long as he has a story to tell he's always going to make music. His music feels like a diary and I'm happy to read it and sonnet to it in all its beauty and ugliness. 
Hi my name is lua o'reilly i make music on soundcloud.com/wormmother
If you liked this review let me know and I'll do a look into earl sweatshirt.
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