Tyler, the Creator Gives the People What They Want But Can't Figure Out What He Needs

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4 days ago

Don't Tap the Glass is Tyler, the Creator's second album in less than a year and, at only 28 minutes, notably less robust than its predecessor, Chromakopia. But all the elements of his work are here: the swaggy boasts, the effortless shifts from deep-voiced rapping to winsome, slightly off-key singing that makes a listener wonder if a second person has entered the booth; and beats that shape-shift like a kid rifling through a toy box. It's the latest manifestation of a boundless creative impulse that has helped him leap from grumpy provocateur circa 2009's Bastard to arena status, an annual music festival in Camp Flog Gnaw, and Billboard chart-topping albums. His musical template of youthful braggadocio and disarming sensitivity should be recognizable to anyone that has absorbed his work. But it's entertaining all the same.
Thematically, Don't Tap the Glass is intended to create distance between Tyler's superstar heroics and the 34-year-old Californian underneath the image. But it's mere packaging for an artist that loves to conceptualize his work to make sense of his latest studio adventures. 'Big Poe' unfolds like an early Aughts bottles-and-models romp, complete with a cameo from Pharrell 'Sk8brd' Williams and a sample of Busta Rhymes and Williams' 2002 hit, 'Pass the Courvoisier Part II.' 'Sugar on My Tongue' echoes the oral-sex allusion of the Talking Heads number (as well the 2003 Trick Daddy and Cee-Lo Green cover) as Tyler sings over an Eighties funk vibe. He appropriates the run-on flow ever-present in current rap lyricism as he rhymes, 'So please keep that weirdo shit from me/I'm just stackin' up my cheese, tryna stay sucka free.' Then he claims on 'Stop Playing with Me,' 'When I get to snappin' like doo-wop/Really got the juice like 2Pac.' For the title track, he chirps, 'Nigga said I lost touch with the regular folks/I ain't never been regular, you niggas is jokes,' and copies Too Short's patented 'Biiitch!' for emphasis.
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Tyler's po-faced assertions of gettin' that paper and flying private with Maverick Carter and Lebron James are offset by moments when he sings anxiously, as if his chest-thumping masks a soft interior. While most melodic rap acts attempt to transform their macho desires into post-millennial pop-blues, Tyler deploys an emo voice that trembles with anxiety, as if he's struggling with vulnerability and gender expectations. Perhaps intentionally, there's nothing on Don't Touch the Glass that feels as explicit as when he rapped on 2017's Flower Boy, 'I've been kissing white boys since 2004.' Instead, he duets with underrated alt-soul performer Madison McFerrin on 'Don't You Worry Baby,' ad-libbing as she sings, 'We can carpool, cum at the same time.' In many ways, Tyler's brazen sexuality feels refreshingly Gen-Z. Yet his incongruent coyness also reflects a lineage of Black performers who curate their public lives, carefully hiding secrets from public view. These tensions appear in most if not all of Tyler's work. 'I can buy the galaxy/But can't afford to look for love,' he sings on 'Tell Me What It Is.'
Don't Tap the Glass may not offer new twists, but it's still fun to hear Tyler conjure magic tricks like 'Don't Worry, Baby,' which spools together an R&Bass rhythm and is reminiscent of Ghost Town DJs' 'My Boo' and K.P. & Envyi's 'Swing My Way.' If this 10-track album has problems, it's not a relative lack of candor, but Tyler's refusal to break from a patented sound that draws from equal parts Kanye West, OutKast, and Neptunes; and has proved an enduring form of hip-hop in the past decade-and-a-half. He's tried shaking things up before with the clumsy Afropunk flurries of 2015's Cherry Bomb. (On 'I'll Take Care of You,' he revisits the rollicking rhythm of that album's title track, and pairs it with a sample of Crime Mob's 'Knuck If You Buck.')
Now that he's matured into such an accomplished musician, one wonders if it isn't worth trying again. Perhaps that's part of the plan for Don't Tap the Glass, too: Give the people what they love, warn the superfans to keep their distance because he's 'Noid,' and figure out what to do next.
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