Tyler's mother guides him across Chromaticityeven if her vocal notes often just summarize the content of the songs. The exception is the devastating “Like Him,” in which Tyler wonders if he'll end up just like his estranged father and his mom suggests the truth is more complicated. “He always wanted to be a father to you. … He's a good guy,” she tells him. This line is a major plot twist in Tyler's knowledge of the Creator: For over a decade, he's been berating his father for being absent. “Daddy ain't your name, see 'faggot' a little more fitting/Mama was only 20 when you got nothing left,” she rapped on 2013's “Answer.” That revelation, combined with the pregnancy scare in “Hey Jane,” he illuminates why he thinks so much about fatherhood. “Boy, selfish, that's why you're afraid to be a parent,” she admits on the self-diss track “Take Your Mask Off.” Few things are more humbling than seeing yourself in someone who, up to this point, has only existed as a villain to you.
Trips to Manila were made Call me when you're lostbut it continues color scheme, Black is a status symbol. Tyler is a fan of Kendrick and Jay-Z—he's playing at the Ken and Friends Juneteenth show this summer and rapping at a 4:44 instrumental in 2017—so he was bound to rap about white supremacy someday. Surprisingly, the man who once declared he wrote music about “white kids with blacker friends who say the n-word” nails it on “I Killed You.” The song begins as an interlude of the children's song “Wheels on the Bus” but transforms into an interrogation of Western beauty. Djembe-sounding drums and intermittent horns wouldn't be out of place in a New Orleans street parade. Tyler, flute in hand like the Pied Piper, urges black people to embrace their freckles, dark skin and other traits the world tries to erase: “You the room, baby, them the fucking elephant.”
Black female rappers seem to be reminding Tyler that there's more to making music at 33 than seriously serious lyrics. “Fuck the pronouns, I'm that nigga and that bitch,” he raps on album standout “Sticky,” featuring GloRilla and Sexyy Red. The rhythm is simple. it sounds like he hired a live band to record background vocals. You can tell he's happy to be with the girls and the chorus is destined to get stuck in your hippocampus. Tyler is an amazing rapper when he wants to be, even on animated beats like “Balloon” and “Thought I Was Dead.” Just like “STUNTMAN” in The sale of real estate, “Rah Tah Tah” channels the West Coast and Southern rap sound that Tyler grew up on. “I'm a bona fide face position, digging in boxes,” he says, making Munch sound like a position of authority.
For everything COLOR COPIESthey are confessors of thy thirty death, he is the braggart, Cherry Bomb-Audio tracks that really hit: “Thought I Was Dead”, “Rah Tah Tah”, “NOID” and “Sticky”. His rejection of the past is understandable. “That version of T that you knew was a memory,” he says on “Tomorrow,” anticipating the reviews: “Who is he? You niggas get too attached to listen to theory.' Not too long ago, entire nations and commonwealths were terrified of Tyler because of his controversial lyrics. Then he started philosophizing and bantering about love and became a little more brand-friendly. Few are as clever in their raps as he is. Fewer still have the kind of infectious arrogance that makes people want to cower rather than roll their eyes.
