Wallflowers aren’t welcome right here. “Primary, physique motion/No sitting nonetheless,” Tyler, the Creator instructs within the opening seconds of his ninth solo album, laying out the primary rule of his dance sanctum. It’s a humorous command, contemplating all the group browsing and moshing his music tends to stoke. There’s additionally the matter of the deep grooves and hyperactive polyrhythms which are as important to his catalog as his beloved chord progressions. However dancing, like intercourse, is a specialised and distinctive type of movement, and Tyler spends the madcap DON’T TAP THE GLASS rewiring his sound to tease out the distinction between responding to music and expressing your self via it.
Like GNX and The Age of Pleasure, DON’T TAP THE GLASS is an train in restraint from a recognized maximalist. The runtime is brisk—28 minutes—with half the songs beneath three minutes, and the longest actually simply two brief tracks stitched collectively. And in contrast to most of Tyler’s albums, there’s no idea. Certain, he’s in ’80s rapper cosplay on the duvet: shirtless, sporting a thick dookie chain, chunky rings, and tomato-red leather-based pants. However he’s extra invested in recreating the playful and horndog temper of a Huge Daddy Kane, LL Cool J, or 2 Dwell Crew report than channeling these rappers’ swaggering, larger-than-life personas. Tyler skitters via assorted sounds of that decade—electro, synth-funk, disco, and Miami bass—to not reinvent himself, however to get misplaced.
Not one of the ensuing songs turn into as sticky and emotionally wealthy as his finest work, however the report rips via strains of dance music with mixmaster fluency. Though Tyler just isn’t a dancefloor native, the footwear match. His music tends to play to open areas: the skate park, the bike path, the competition stage, the sportscar with the home windows down. Even his misanthropic work from the Odd Future days, whereas dyspeptic and insular, evoked the infinite openness of desires. (Nightmares, natch.) Right here he’s all about compression, cramming the preparations with melodies and rhythms, rapping in quickfire splatters, and continuously in transition.
Opener “Huge Poe” performs like a sampler of his idol Pharrell’s discography: there’s In My Thoughts-era swag rap from Tyler and Skateboard P himself, dusty N.E.R.D. drums, blaring synths, and even a pattern of the Neptunes-produced “Cross the Courvoisier, Half II.” All of the songs really feel pressure-cooked on this means: humid, effervescent, enclosed. I’ve by no means heard a Tyler track within the membership, however this may change that.
Tyler appears intent on taking a breather after the in depth soul-baring and rumination of final yr’s Chromakopia. The challenges of settling into his 30s dominated that report, which turned his musings on parenthood, relationships, and fears into sprawling sound collages. The Tyler of DON’T TAP THE GLASS is extra single-minded, eager to fuck, flex, and goof off. Repeating the album title throughout the report, he appears to be saying, Benefit from the music and go away me alone.
