What an album. Tyler, The Creator is an artist who before 2017, I had never paid any attention to - I had heard only the 'Golden Girl' feature from channel ORANGE, and being in the down-pitched vocal style, wasn't really enamored by it. However, extensive media coverage of Flower Boy leaking led to my curiosity getting the best of me, so I checked it out when it dropped on the 21st of July... and god damn, I'm happy I did.
Flower Boy is an incredibly well put together album. It's conceptual, it's lyrical, it's abstract, it's relatable, and it's absolutely gorgeously produced. Every song is a highlight here - from the very poetic 'Foreword', which uses a clever wordplay-scheme to open the album up with the questions Tyler has about his life and career - "How many cars can I buy 'til I run out of drive? How much drive can I have 'til I run out of road? How much road can they pave 'til I run out of land? How much land can there be 'til I run in the ocean?" Questioning if the materialistic lifestyle of living in luxury will ever truly fulfill him, and if it will ever being him drive or motivation to create. But Flower Boy is an album which uses an extended metaphor, of a long car drive being life itself - first appearing here, when he wonders if his 'drive' will push him off the edge, and again on later songs such as 'Pothole'. The Pothole is a metaphor for being stuck, and not being able to move forward in life, and Tyler falls in one at the beginning of this song when he realizes that some n***a's ain't his right-hand men, and attempts to make a "triple left tryna double back". At the end of the song, he again references the metaphor, saying "I just want... find somebody who loves me, raise a couple of lizards but my vehicle's good for now, that's in a couple of miles, just keep it pushin'". The beat on this track is bassy and dark, sprinkled with some high-pitched horns to balance it back out again, and gives way to the wonderful instrumental of the next track 'Garden Shed' which opens with a 3-minute musical composition. Featuring soft singing snippets from some of the vocal guests found elsewhere on the album, before Tyler steals the entire last minute for a show-stopping delivery, shedding light on his bisexuality - using a Garden Shed as a metaphor for the closet, perfectly fitting the floral-themed backdrop of the record - alienating himself from his friends, fearful they won't understand him. The next track, Boredom, is an amazing ballad-rap; perhaps the best instrumental on the album, the singing is wondrous, the beat is so spacey, airy, gorgeous, and enveloping, Tyler using it to lament the loss of his friends - "Bored and getting desperate as hell, cellular not amusing and I hope someone will message me with some plans that are amusing as well cause I haven’t seen the exit of these walls since before this morning". He has a change of heart by the next track, though, 'I Ain't Got Time!' one of the two bangers on the album, and perhaps my favorite of the two. (I do love 'Who Dat Boy?' though, with A$AP Rocky giving easily his best performance since his last album.) "I Ain't Got Time!', in stark contrast to being bored, finds Tyler actually sounding truly dangerous for the first time in his career - not some pseudo "Kill people burn shit fuck school" type of pubescent rage, but when you hear the beat slow down and Tyler growl "Listen man, I'm that boy, all you little n***a's clones, boy I fill that void, you better kill that noise" he actually sounds threatening. It isn't the only spot on the track he does this, too, denouncing anybody who will tell him to do whatever they think he should do, but never do anything themselves: "I'm gon' read commas, you gon' leave comments, telling me what I shoulda did but you ain't did nada, you ain't important". It's menacing, heart racing, and awesome, especially with the racing beat flying all over the place right behind him; darting synths, floating keyboards, and all. The album is closed by a suite of tracks that focus on the loneliness Tyler has faced in his life, with both relationships and friendships. '911 / Mr. Lonely' tackles it head-on, with lyrics such as "I'm the loneliest man alive, but I keep on dancing to throw 'em off" and "mirror mirror on the wall (who?) who's the loneliest of them all (me!) cupid acting stupid, do you got another number I can call?" and again, the instrumental and singing on the chorus of this track are heart-warmingly beautiful, both Steve Lacy and Frank Ocean adding fantastic layers to the track. Instrumentally, the album takes a darker turn on 'November', a nostalgic track with uses November as a metaphor for not a time, but a place AND a time, which were the happiest of your life. His was the summer of 2006 - other voices enlisted for the track can be heard in the background stating their Novembers, be it going to Kanye West's Glow In The Dark tour, summer of 2014 in Miami 41st street, or getting their first feature film. In misery from his loneliness of never having a relationship and losing all his friends, Tyler begs to be taken back to his November, only for his pleas to be cut short by a voice right at the end of the track - "My November is right now". Jolting him back into reality, Tyler then speaks directly to the love interest he has been crushing on all this time. "I wrote a song about you, I want your opinion... the lyrics are, fuck it I'll just call you so you can hear it". We then hear him play the song, which is the track 'Glitter'. Instead of a creepy, rapey, Bastard or Goblin-era sounding stalker track, 'Glitter' is actually a very cute, sweet, and youthful sounding love song which opens with Tyler's voice pitched up to make him sound younger, where he professes his love for the person in question. "Every time you come around, I feel like glitter / you're the one, I need in my life". The second half of the track pitches far down (matching the lyric from 'November' where in reference to this song, Tyler says "opposite of my heart rate, it slow down at the ending") and Tyler comes to terms with the fact that the relationship will never work out, be it because the interest has no return feelings for Tyler, or is the same gender as Tyler is but is straight; it's unspecified, but Tyler says "Look at my face, look at that joy, this is one-sided, yeah I can't lie, we ain't gon' work out". When the song ends, though, we hear a voice recording through a phone line - "we didn't get your message, either because you were not speaking, or because of a bad connection". Tyler had mustered up all the courage to call his crush, and play for them a love song he had made just for them, hoping they would hear it, attempting to leave it as a voicemail as they didn't pick up; but the phone didn't hear him, and all that is left is for Tyler to say "Fuck". Conceptually, the album ends here, but the final track is a gorgeous instrumental track by the name "Enjoy Right Now, Today!" referencing back to his realization that November is not a memory to long for forever, but is right now, is always. The instrumental is a fantastic ending, very reminiscent of Mos Def's 'May-December' from 1999's Black On Both Sides. Pharrell guests for very light harmonizing vocals on the track, and it ends with the sound of a car being turned off, keys taken from the ignition, and the doors closing, Tyler walking away from it. I don't give many albums perfect scores, but this album blew my mind like nothing has since To Pimp A Butterfly. An artist I'd never thought I'd like has delivered, by leaps and bounds, my favorite album of 2017, and also one of my most adored albums of this decade. The growth demonstrated from Cherry Bomb to now (which I retroactively checked out after loving this album, to a bit of sour disappointment) is astounding and proves Tyler, The Creator is one of the most creative and talented rappers of his time. Did I mention he produced the album in its entirety? Anyone who can put instrumentals together deserves props as one of the best producers in hip-hop, right now. Flower Boy is wildly creative, daring & ear-pleasing; Tyler raps better than he ever has, on every track on the album; all the guest's slot perfectly into their respective roles, with even Jaden Smith laying a likable hook on 'Pothole'; all the boxes are ticked, and no song disappoints. 10/10 |
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