by Laurika Pich ‘27

Fans were launched into Tyler, The Creator’s Chromakopia era on October 16 with a teaser of his track “St. Chroma” on Youtube, along with the album’s cover art. The black and white teaser shows a soldier wearing a mask marching in a desert – presumably Tyler – leading other men in suits into a large shipping container with the words of the album’s name: Chromakopia. Once inside, Tyler detonates the shipping container. 

Chromokopia serves as the official follow up on Tyler’s 2021 album Call Me If You Get Lost. From one of his B-sides from the album, in the 2023 music video for “Sorry Not Sorry,” a figure of a soldier welcomes a crowd of people into a theater, opening with velvet red curtains opening to a desert-set stage where multiple alter-egos of Tyler, every one of them representing him at a certain time of his music career through referencing an album of his. Chromakopia reveals the figure to be its masked protagonist, St. Chroma. Tyler’s mother, Bonita Smith, is among one of the people in the crowd. Smith opens up Tyler’s tracks with different clips of her talking as a narration. 

Her voice leads in tracks such as “Like Him,” which is introduced with Smith describing the physical features that Tyler and his father had shared, as well that his father was a good guy and wanted to be a father to him. Tyler’s perspective towards his father is shifted, contrary to what he expressed about his father in the Tyler, the Creator story that fans are familiar with. Tyler has shown resentment and hatred towards his father for abandoning him and not being present in his life at a young age as shown in his past albums, most prominently in his 2013’s Answer. Smith indicates an underlying message, as there was a reason that he left. “Do I look like him?” he pleads, to which these pleas shift into screams as the song goes on, demanding for an answer to why his father chose to leave him. 

An early track that Tyler released is “Noid,”  short for paranoid. It analyzes how crazed fans and the public have been treating him, as if he was an object and not a human being. “Noid” represents one of the worst fears that Tyler, as well as other celebrities have, with encounters of parasocial fans and their lack of respect of personal boundaries, most notably with celebrities.

His other tracks are showcases of the ranges that Tyler can go for his music, with “Balloon”, with a cartoony beat sampling, along with his aggravating and aggressive 2015 Cherry Bomb-esque tracks such as “Rah Tah Tah” and “Thought I was Dead” makes Tyler stand out as an artist with insane duality.

Grade: A-