The LA-based Tyler Okonma undeniably lives up to the 'creator' part of his stage name. Creator of Odd Future, one of the biggest stables in modern hip-hop that ultimately gave us Frank Ocean; The Internet; Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler himself. Creator of dope beats and troublesome tweets. Creator of art and clothing. Also the creator of roadblocks as seen when he made a surprise return to London on May 18th. Tyler returns with his 5th LP titled IGOR.
Released on the same day as Father Of Asahd, DJ Khaled was mad that IGOR beat his album to the Number 1 spot on the billboard charts. As I said in my review of FOA, if Khaled cared more about critical success than commercial success then maybe he wouldn't have happened. Quite fitting that Khaled recently released a song called Jealous eh?
Anyways enough about Khaled and congrats to Tyler for scoring his first ever number 1 album on the billboard charts.
While there is a bit of rapping involved, this is certainly not a rap album overall. Feels like the West Coaster was singing for the most part as seen from his lead single EARFQUAKE. IGOR certainly shows that Tyler has evolved from his horrorcore Yonkers days to a complete musician.
Lyrically, the album focusses predominantly on the breakdown of a relationship and he enlists the likes of Solange and the legendary Charlie Wilson to emphasise this. They amongst others were used to great effect. A couple rappers such as the UK's Slowthai and Lil Uzi Vert featured but the only rapper that dropped a rap verse was Playboi Carti and frankly, I wish he didn't. I don't f with mumble rappers.
Tyler did actually drop some cool verses but I feel IGOR was more of an outlet for the OFWGKTA leader to showcase his composing ability rather than his songwriting. Entirely self-produced, I'm not even sure how to define the sound of this album. There are elements of hip hop but also 70's soul, gospel, R&B, experimental, funk, electro, dance, rock and possibly a lot more.
What I will say though is that the production's dope and I would describe this as a child of N.E.R.D's In Search Of... and a sibling of Matt Martian's The Drum Chord Theory.
You may be interested to know that Tyler, The Creator cited In Search Of... as the G.O.A.T album and also did some production work on The Drum Chord Theory.
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| The student and the master |
I review hip-hop albums and I wouldn't class this album as such so I'm not gonna spend much more time on this. I will wrap this up by saying Tyler is additionally the creator of one of the best albums of 2019. I'll give this an 8.5.
FAVES
Verse- NEW MAGIC WAND v4
Beat- RUNNING OUT OF TIME
Feature- Charlie Wilson (EARFQUAKE)
Track- RUNNING OUT OF TIME
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