Tyler, The Creator’s Chromakopia: Sometimes Being Yourself Isn’t Always a Good Thing

Tyler, The Creator has done it again.

He’s put out another hit record, and it really is a pretty great one. It has been a huge success with fans and critics alike, and some would argue that it’s his best yet. But it’s definitely not.

“Chromakopia” is the latest album from rapper, producer, designer, writer and actor, Tyler Okonma — known professionally as Tyler, The Creator. Recognized for his unique style, polarizing personality and offensive lyrical content, Okonma rose to fame in the late 2000s as the frontman of alternative hip-hop collective Odd Future — short for Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. “Chromakopia” follows the widely successful trilogy of “Flower Boy” (2017), “Igor” (2019), and “Call Me If You Get Lost” (2021), continuing the run of a newer, more mature style from Tyler — with more of a focus on artistry, less on controversy.

I started listening to Okonma around the same time everyone else did, with the path-changing release of “Flower Boy” and after my initial introduction to him in reruns of Odd Future’s surreal 2012 Adult Swim sketch comedy show, “Loiter Squad.” I haven’t ventured much into his older stuff — mainly because I don’t want to be scarred for life. The release of “Who Dat Boy,” the lead single from “Flower Boy,” and its accompanying music video were enough for me to get as much of an idea for his early catalog as I wanted. But there’s always been something fascinating and entrancing about the man, so I decided to follow his career, up the ladder into his now universal success in the mainstream. He peaked with the cultural and artistic masterpiece that is “Igor,” and I don’t expect him to ever get to that level again. Since then, Okonma has released two versions of the braggadocious “Call Me If You Get Lost,” before finally returning on Oct. 16, with the music video for “St. Chroma” and the announcement of the new album.

Marketed to be “Tyler’s most vulnerable album yet,” I was immediately skeptical. When “being vulnerable” is the whole gimmick for anything, it can be easy to lose all sense of actual genuineness, using “vulnerability” as a mask in of itself. I believe Tyler does that more often than not on this record. “Chromakopia” is kind of a culmination of everything Tyler has ever made — but not really in a good way. Sounds listeners have heard throughout the years are recycled, using everything from Tyler’s initial “horrorcore” production to his now jazz and R&B-influenced style. His bizarre and often harsh writing is still there, and his energetic and cartoonish personality is also present. But on an album where the whole point is supposed to be about “getting serious” and “getting real,” Tyler’s unserious attitude makes it hard to take a lot of it to heart, and even the whole style can end up being a little boring at times since nothing too new’s really being presented.

The idea of “Chromakopia” — a still unexplained combination of the roots “chroma” meaning “color” and “kopia” meaning “in abundance” — is completely abandoned halfway through the record after being chanted in songs throughout its first half. It is then forgotten until the end of the closing track, “I Hope You Find Your Way Home,” where it’s repeated one last time to end the album. It’s interesting too — Tyler, known for extensive use of colors in his recent work, has stuck to a mainly black and white aesthetic for the album rollout. All music videos and promotional material have been shot in black and white, with color “exploding” on the screen at the climax of each video, painting most frames with a bright green usually before the video abruptly ends.

The greater story of the record is pretty disjointed too, as it’s supposed to revolve around a character named “St. Chroma,” who is introduced in the opening track of the same name but is then never used or referenced again. He appears in the music video for the track, as well as in “Noid” and “Thought I Was Dead,” but no deeper lore is ever explored or revealed. In actuality, the main characters of the album are Tyler himself and his mother, Bonita Smith, who narrates the record.

As the album progresses, it becomes apparent that Smith wants a grandchild, and Tyler struggles with the idea of becoming a father. It’s a great concept, and one that is only explored in six songs. A song like “Hey Jane” is great — and admittedly one of my favorites, for its complex storytelling, quality writing, clean production and serious tone — but is hard for me to get behind because of messages about reproduction that I believe to be morally wrong. “Darling, I” is a favorite too, but the ideas that “monogamy is not for him,” that “nobody could fulfill him like music” and that he would rather just be “lonely with these Grammys” aren’t just sad; they are also hard to believe. The reasons behind his inability to commit to and form any healthy romantic relationships are later revealed in “Like Him,” the deepest and most genuinely vulnerable song on the record, and it becomes obvious that Tyler still has a long way to go before he finds his way home. 

It makes songs like the closing track and even the bold and masterful “Take Your Mask Off” completely ineffective as Tyler — who began his career in commercial music with the line “I’m not a f***ing role model” — suddenly tries to mentor his listeners. Both tracks are fantastic and great as standalone songs, but in the context of the album they begin to lose their meaning. What is worse is that songs like “Like Him” are immediately followed by the completely unserious “Balloon,” a song that legitimately sounds like it could be played at a circus. The two halves of the album are also connected by the awkward and erratic “Sticky,” which is genuinely one of the worst songs I’ve ever heard. Both are notorious for their wacky and explicit lines and production, and seem to be attempts at “lightening up” the album. They actually just take away from the atmosphere, distracting from whatever depth Tyler was actually starting to get to before losing his focus and proving himself unable to stay serious for more than like 2 songs. 

But contrary to everyone — Anthony Fantano, some random Reddit user, people in the comments of its genius.com page — I actually really like “Judge Judy.” Secretly, from a production and storytelling aspect, it’s also one of my favorites. It’s extremely sexually explicit, but I love a needlessly sad ending that comes out of nowhere to tug at your heartstrings. The message is weird and oddly specific, and I don’t understand the random reference to one of TV’s most beloved arbiters or the inclusion of the overly graphic second verse — apart from the fact that the song seems to be about not judging someone for what they’re into sexually. But the age-old story of meeting someone by chance at a coffee shop and having a whirlwind romance with them before they tragically die is kinda beautiful, and the instrumentation is lush and immersive. People will argue that it’s out of place, off-putting or just plain gross — and it is — but it’s also the exact kind of thing you should expect from Tyler. The explicit lyrics are even more jarring when set to the calm, melancholy guitar and synths, which is all intentional. It’s a part of Tyler’s shocking delivery, and if anybody is surprised by this, I’d love to hear their reaction to any line off of his debut 2011 release, “Goblin.”

“Tomorrow” is great, and another one that I’d consider to be among my favorites, but sadly, it’s the most forgettable track on the album, and behind the closer, it’s the least streamed song by far. I do wonder, however, if this song and its five companions — “Darling, I,” “Hey Jane,” “Take Your Mask Off,” “Like Him,” and “I Hope You Find Your Way Home” — would work better as a more condensed, cohesive EP about Tyler’s relationship with his parents and the ideas of starting his own family. Instead, this memorable theme of the album acts like a mask to a messy, scattered, all over the place collection of “vulnerable” songs. If this really is a vulnerable Tyler, the Creator, I don’t know if I want it. I want to listen to Tyler for his now jazz-oriented and synth-heavy production — and occasionally for his witty, creative or absurd lines — not for his unsurprisingly wacky beliefs about the world. I’d even argue that “Flower Boy” alone was more vulnerable for taking a near 180 thematically and stylistically and for unabashedly revealing Tyler’s softer, more sensitive side. Even “Goblin” was more vulnerable just for the sheer fearlessness of daring to say the things said on that album. “Igor” was more vulnerable for taking such huge risks artistically, winning Okonma his first Grammy.               

All of this being said, “Chromakopia” legitimately is a pretty great record and a significant cut above most other hip-hop albums out right now. I do, however, think I’ll just take the few songs I like from the album and go back to listening to “Flower Boy,” “Igor,” and “Call Me If You Get Lost” in their entirety on repeat. Better yet, I’ll just go listen to Kevin Abstract and his own rap supergroup, Brockhampton — artists who are and always have been vulnerable and emotionally mature, except for Ameer Vann, who always had weird Tyler-ish lines from the beginning until he finally got accused of sexual assault and kicked out of the band.

GREAT: “St. Chroma,” “Darling, I,” “Hey Jane,” “Take Your Mask Off,” “Like Him”

GOOD: “Noid,” “Tomorrow,” “I Hope You Find Your Way Home”

NOT GOOD: “Sticky,” “Balloon”

OVERALL RATING: 7/10