Tyler, The Creator: 10 Albums to (Re)create a World

Rodin's pensive expression belies his cap-wearing insubordination. The first scene of Yonkers , the music video that introduced Tyler, the Creator to the world, is an unforgettable calling card: a high-pitched, unnerving noise, minimal drums, vulgar kick and snare drums, and a bass guitar captured from the depths of the well, deep and menacing, pave the way for the rapper's first verse, which stares us straight in the eye—"I am a paradox with legs." In the years that followed, the warning was fulfilled: from nettle to hothouse flower, from hostile to saccharine, from homophobic to bisexual, from indie to industry titan, Tyler's paradoxes form a fascinating and hard-to-beat discography.

Don't Tap The Glass is Tyler, The Creator's tenth album: nine LPs and a holiday EP. Released in late July, without any fanfare or fanfare—a mere social media announcement, here it is—it tops the North American sales charts, ahead of Justin Bieber and the recently deceased Ozzy Osbourne. It's the musician's third consecutive album to go straight to number one on the Billboard charts, and we're not exactly talking about a collection of songs of unbridled ambition; quite the opposite, as he himself explained in his only promotional interview, with New York radio station HOT 97:

"I started the album on December 31st, made a beat, chords, and amazing drums, but I hated the result. And I deleted it. Dude, I'm so sick of myself. I opened a new file and just wanted to make something urgent, happy, that sounded like a computer, no strings, no piano, none of that (...) everything has to be lively, I want to move, no slow shit, no thinking too much, I want to be silly and have fun again."

A disposable half-hour album, chock-full of dance and silliness, is without a second thought the best-selling album in the US. How did we get here? We re-listened to the albums of the musician, producer, designer, skater, and Odd Future frontman to come to a conclusion.

At 16, Tyler Gregory Okonma, a kid recognized on the streets of Hawthorne, Southern California, as a BMX rider with a musical talent, challenged a handful of neighbors to compose songs, short films, and general nonsense, later titled Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All—Wolf Gang to his friends, Odd Future to others. Two years later, in 2009, Odd Future released Tyler, The Creator's debut album: Bastard on their website.

The unloved first album, a mixtape-like, dark, and minimalist album, has disappeared from major streaming platforms—some say it was removed due to unauthorized copyright infringement; others argue that, probably rightly, the musician decided to erase this torrent of vulgarity. Tyler plays a therapist, "Dr. TC," with a modulated, even deeper voice, who guides the absurdities occurring in the musician's then-adolescent mind: accounts of homicides, cocaine use in churches, suicide attempts, and the repeated rape of women. The album follows Eminem's teachings to the letter: more excess, more shock, stretching the rope until it snaps.

Shock is the comfortable language for uncovering a heartbreaking absence: "My father's dead, well, I don't know, we'll never fucking meet/ I cut my wrist and play piano 'cause I'm so depressed," lyric in Bastard . Raised by his mother, Tyler fostered a hatred and fascination for his absent father figure, a Nigerian immigrant whose name remains unknown to this day. In return, he formed a new family, the Wolf Gang, a mix of Wu-Tang Clan and Jackass ; first, his childhood friends arrived, and then other minor geniuses, from Earl Sweatshirt to Frank Ocean, but the pack had a clear leader: Tyler, the bastard.

“Goblin”

" Yonkers Earthquake," the first single from Goblin , had violent aftershocks during Tyler and company's television debut: alongside Hodgy Beats, masked in balaclavas, they scream, run, and howl, possessed by the enviable demon of youth. That night, empowered by the synthesizer and claustrophobic beat, Odd Future kicked their way into our home.

Goblin is the traditional second album: the same song—a sepulchral melody, sparse notes, minimal samples—enhanced by the confidence of proven evidence—returns the therapist and the ordinary patient, who finally confesses that it's all fantasy; the boy neither drinks nor smokes, much less cocaine and murders. Hyperbolized violence is a kind of hip-hop subgenre, horrorcore, made famous by the Geto Boys' persecutory classic, "Mind Playing Tricks on Me ," or, in Portugal, by Allen Halloween's chronicles of drugs and looting. The songs challenge listeners, unaware of it; they are hypnotized by celebrating verses that promote rape; Goblin attempts to resolve this paradox by arguing that the only violence is self-inflicted: "I'm not a fucking role model / I'm a nineteen-year-old fucking emotional coaster with pipe dreams."

2011 is a turning point for Odd Future: Sony releases the collective through sublabel Odd Future Records; Adult Swim hires the musicians to create a sketch comedy show; R&B shaman Frank Ocean, who appears here in the voyeuristic She , makes his own debut; Tyler creates the clothing line Golf Wang; Earl Sweatshirt is sent to a boarding school in Samoa, and his disappearance echoes effervescently on internet forums — “Free Earl!”; the friends write, draw, film, and record completely alone, in a contained revolution, conquering the world.

At 21, the age of American adulthood, Tyler overcomes his growing pains; the somber beats yield to harmonic complexity, in an ambitious album that roars beyond his entourage of troubled teens. The rapper's lyrics, however, remain unwavering, in their best style, cursing and airing dirty laundry, with a new cast of characters, Wolf and Sam, a paradoxical friendship that represents, as usual, an irresolvable internal conflict.

The opening song best reflects this dichotomy: the sumptuous arrangements are accompanied by the poetry of, and I quote, "Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck him." When he ventures into a ballad, in "IFHY ," he concludes: "I fucking hate you, but I love you." This ferocity results in a succession of bangers — Tamale , Domo23 , or Rusty . The emblematic track is "Answer ," where he fantasizes about a phone call with his father, the first of many songs about the consequences of answering or not answering the phone, the trill of encounters and disagreements that build a life.

Wolf's songs with Nas, Pharrell, and Erykah Badu, and his appearances on albums by Pusha T and The Game, broke Odd Future's isolation; in a genre that thrives on street buzz, rappers line up for the opportunity to record in the studio with hip-hop's new prophets. And now, the only way is up; nothing can stop this momentum, right?

“Cherry Bomb”

At a time of intense, make-or-break anticipation, Cherry Bomb is a critical and sales failure, and the United Kingdom, his main foreign market, under orders from then-Home Secretary Theresa May, bans the musician from entering Her Majesty's lands for inciting hatred and homophobia. The European tour is canceled. Tyler's demons have finally bitten him in the ass.

In a recent interview, the musician confessed what, at the time, he wouldn't allow himself to admit publicly: Cherry Bomb 's songs weren't good enough. "My goal was to prove that I was a diverse producer, that I could make any genre of music. My focus was production, but because of that, the songs suffered; I left the lyrics and structure to the back burner."

Cherry Bomb is a grandiloquent disaster; the saturated production aims for Kanye West but hits more like Leonard Cohen's damned "Death of a Ladies' Man ." However, let's be fair, here are the pieces, jumbled, admittedly, that would form the musical puzzle of Tyler's next albums: the conciliation between the flashy performer— Cherry Bomb —and the composer of meticulous medleys— " Fucking Young / Perfect ." All that was missing was a little more care for the songs.

Five years after Cherry Bomb and the UK's travel ban, the musician buried the hatchet, in all his impish glory, accepting the award for best solo artist on the BRIT Awards stage: "I want to send a special thank you to someone very dear to me, who made it impossible for me to come to this country five years ago. I know she's furious at home. Thank you, Theresa May."

“Flower Boy”

In the most unexpected garden, that hornet's nest of insult and self-pity, a lush flower sprouted. Today, the magnitude of the announcement is hard to comprehend: the rapper accused of homophobia came out as bisexual—"I've been kissing men since 2004," he confesses in "I Ain't Got Time ." And perhaps even more shocking, Flower Boy wasn't a compilation of somber beats; the sun dispelled the gloom, the songs stretched out upon awakening, all violins and pianos, pedaling along on a serene California morning.

The harmonic complexity is astonishing; this kid was just now making arrangements with his elbows; the versatility of the production and the vocal maneuvers, from high falsettos to low, diaphragm-tingling bass, allow him to explore, in a single song, genres as diverse as neo soul, progressive reveries, portentous beats, or psychedelic rock. Imagine the songs as a house; Tyler roams the hallways, peeks through the window, breaks down the wall, and finds a new room.

911 / Mr. Lonely is the magnum opus : the gentle choruses of Frank Ocean and Steve Lacy soften the entrance, the pulse of an 808 grabs us immediately, after the capture, they take us for a walk through the neighborhood, stop halfway, hit us over the head with a nervous hi-hat , and at this point no one knows what's up, except the wizard behind the curtains, dancing to distract us: “I'm the loneliest man alive/ But I keep on dancin' to throw 'em off”.

The oddball between rebirth— Flower Boy —and consecration— Igor —is a Christmas EP, which, as the title suggests, was inspired by the movie Grinch —not the one starring Jim Carrey, the other, animated one. Composer Danny Elfman, with a pedigree in Christmas songs, challenged Tyler to compose the soundtrack single—why not? The rapper has a song called Fuck This Christmas and was arrested for vandalism on Christmas Eve, what better CV?

After releasing "You're a Mean One," Mr. Grinch decided to pursue the theme with a 10-minute EP, which deserves to be remembered above all for the commissioned composer Tyler could have been: songs of baroque pop, teen R&B, ambient electro, and supermarket background music. And let's not waste any more time on this EP that no one remembers; the most important thing to remember from 2018 was Tyler, The Creator's only concert in Portugal, an immaculate performance of lunatic energy on the stage of Primavera Sound in Porto.

“Igor”

Once upon a time, there was Igor, a man with blond hair, a baby blue suit, and sunglasses, who skipped through the streets until, unexpectedly, he fell in love with another man, an overwhelming love that promised to stop at nothing—not even a girlfriend. Igor 's love triangle is Tyler's most successful conceptual proposition, an album that achieves the unthinkable: conveying not only in verse, but also in melody, arrangements, and production, the vertigo of passion, jealousy, and breakup.

The rollercoaster, between overwhelm and disillusionment, never lets up for a moment, always on the ups and downs: extraordinary love songs, without any pretensions, like EARFQUAKE , which was originally composed for Justin Bieber; the insane groove, which comes out of nowhere, halfway through RUNNING OUT OF TIME ; the commonplace envy turned into dissonant harmony in NEW MAGIC WAND ; love as a weapon, to the point of a chorus that literally triggers the metaphor — A BOY IS A GUN ; or the clerical farewell funk of ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?. In short, a masterpiece.

The musicians who collaborated on Igor 's recordings point to the album's influences—Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Solange, CeeLo Green, and Jack White—but they're merely anecdotes. Igor is a one-man show, as evidenced by the songs that seem to be whispered in a closed room, yet at the same time, with a window open to an immense landscape—you can hear cars, planes, gunshots, hurried footsteps, a life passing by. Igor topped the Billboard charts and was awarded the Grammy for Best Rap Album, the rapper's definitive consolidation in the music industry, or rather, the musician's. Are there even any raps or bars on Igor ? Does anyone still remember that rude bastard?

“Call Me If You Get Lost”

It's the "betinho" album. The persona now is Tyler Baudelaire, a nouveau riche on a grand tour of Europe: open-top Rolls Royce, Louis Vuitton suitcases, Cartier watches, beige shorts, and boat shoes, but with a certain sophistication, you can see him with friends in Cannes, Roland Garros, or aboard a yacht, popping cherries. He doesn't even like the aforementioned "bitch" insult anymore, he assures in CORSO . The concept of "Call Me If You Get Lost " is irrelevant—in short, a self-proclaimed citizen of the world on a journey, inside and out—behold the return of the skilled rapper, when some critics were already doubting his ability to return to juggling hip-hop bars.

The album is a step forward and a step back. The step forward is Igor's same melodic world-building, here even more lucid, incandescent with the luxurious glow around it— "HOT WIND BLOWS" with Lil Wayne is pure Burt Bacharach, and the medley " SWEET / I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE" is a bodybuilding display. Look at my muscles as a producer, arranger, and singer in ten consecutive minutes. Do better if you can. The step back is the lyrical, insolent, boastful delivery of the first albums, like "LUMBERJACK" or "JUGGERNAUT ," now on an immense scale, reminiscent of the great hip-hop albums of yesteryear, by Lil Wayne, Jay Z, or Kayne West. The victorious return ended with a headline slot at Coachella, one of the biggest festivals in the world.

“Chromakopia”

Chromakopia is Tyler, the Creator's most honest album, perhaps his only one. And his method for intimacy is, of course, a disguise, this time literal, embodying a certain Saint Chroma who dons a black mask to reveal his true colors. The other character on the album is real, Bonita Smith, the musician's mother, who has one of those colorful personalities, and certainly explains her son's exuberance and self-confidence: "You're the best," she repeats, "don't trust anyone," "don't give an inch," "use condoms," or even, "never tell that bitch you love her."

Motherly advice guides a nostalgic stroll through the streets of Hawthorne. Besides, Chromakopia doesn't reinvent the wheel; it's practically a best-of of all Tyler's albums: the romantic R&B songs, particularly The Neptunes' "Darling, I" ; the progressive ego trips " Noid ," with an unexpected sample of Zambian Paul Ngozi; the ingenious laboratory beats in the military cadence of "Thought I Was Dead" ; or the response to the anthem "WAP" in "Sticky ," which suggests that, after all, men make us salivate too.

Honesty is transparent in "Like Him ," the denouement of a long story: a boy haunted by the ghost of his absent father. After so much transformation, the inevitable outcome is coming to terms with his past; it was this detour that led him to the top. At 33, he himself tells us that, in this league, he is Kendrick Lamar and no one else—"The biggest out of the city after Kenny, that's a fact now." And the facts are not up for debate.

“Don't Tap the Glass”

"Number one: move your body. No standing still, 'Let's dance, bro ,'" orders Tyler himself. There's no character here, just a Lando Calrissian mustache and thick glasses. "Number two, only talk about good things," he continues, in full Fight Club rules mode. "Leave the baggage at home, no deep scenes." Nine albums later, the world-builder took a night off, let go of his traumas and heartbreaks, open the dance floor, and come closer. It's body-to-body dancing, like sugar in your mouth.

Don't Tap the Glass is the first album by the uncommitted musician—it was bound to happen someday. The composer is more than ready to go, with ten songs that don't even reach half an hour, electro synths, pulsating 808s, and memorable lines: "I don't trust white men with dreadlocks." The repertoire is the most playful in memory, with the usual feverish energy—" Stop Playing with Me "—the recreational funk of a hotline, in anticipation of love—" Ring Ring Ring "—or the retro R&B and neo-soul song, in this incarnation boosted by the Jungle beat, "Don't You Worry Baby ."

Don't Tap the Glass is possibly a mere blip in this sublime discography, a transitional moment, and yet, make no mistake, it is one of the most successful and best albums of 2025—and there's no better proof than this of its current state of grace. If you're still skeptical, allow me to quote Tyler, the Creator one last time: "I won't say it again: I'm the best in the world."