#TYLER THE CREATOR WOLF ALBUM STORYLINE TV#

Tyler plays both roles, inspiration and inspired, but saves his best lines for the fan, with whom he has more in common than he’d care to admit: “In school I was the one that was thinking outside boxes/So everybody in them would say that I got problems” “I heard that first piano chord and it drew me in like predators carrying treats.” (The mild sexual undertone Tyler gives the conversation cheapens the song’s power but doesn’t completely undermine it.)įew rappers are more plain-spoken about their feelings than Tyler is, and luckily success hasn’t dampened that. “Colossus” is his version of Eminem’s “Stan,” more or less, documenting an awkward interaction with a fan who doesn’t know when to stop. Another consistent thread on “Wolf” is how he navigates interacting with the gaggle of outsiders who have found solace in his music and place him, a former outsider, on less familiar turf.

That aw-shucks accessibility makes Tyler’s transformation into the sort of rapper who raps about his house (even if from an awe-struck perspective) and gripes about his fans even more jarring. (Earl Sweatshirt is serving as his hypeman, more or less.) But he does high-five almost everyone in the front row and looks genuinely moved when a couple of fans present him with Tyler-theme art they’ve made for him. Not once did he stage dive, as he did frequently during the early days of Odd Future, leaving that to the crew members who loiter onstage. At his show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn last month, part of his first solo tour, fans brought him vinyl albums that he’d mentioned wanting on Twitter. The small distances among Tyler, his peers and his listeners is an integral part of the Odd Future experience. On “Whoa,” the new Earl Sweatshirt single, Tyler raps, “50K for the last check/But the dollar menu still be on deck.” He’s not boasting about frugality but rather relatability. On “Rusty” he says, “Hated the popular ones, now I’m the popular one/Also hated homes too ’til I start coppin’ me some.” His version of wealth isn’t typical, though. He’s more measured, more reflective and couches even his most volatile thoughts in a layer of reserve. Until now he’s been burning off energy at a high rate and volume, making for some brilliant songs and tempestuous live shows, but “Wolf” (Odd Future) marks a transition to a place where knee-jerk reactions aren’t always his endpoint.

The stoic R&B sensualist Frank Ocean is part of Odd Future, the mesmerizing rapper Earl Sweatshirt is part of Odd Future, and so are many others, but without Tyler’s grab bag of reference points as glue the center wouldn’t hold.

#TYLER THE CREATOR WOLF ALBUM STORYLINE TV#

Odd Future - the Los Angeles crew, the record label, the clothing company, the TV show - has essentially been built on his back. Maybe the only other artist as resistant to growing up is Taylor Swift.įor the last three or so years he’s been one of hip-hop’s true originals, a skateboarding foul mouth with an ear for soft jazz and an eye for infectious iconography. “Wolf” is the third album from Tyler, the Creator, and it shows him, at 22, trying to figure out exactly which types of youth he still wants to hold onto. Sometimes it’s a fixed condition, sometimes it’s a choice. There are so many ways to be young: ignore responsibility, look wide-eyed at the world, rile up elders, don’t deliver on promises, make fun of the incomprehensible, avoid feeling, believe in yourself over all others.

Tyler the creator wolf album storyline