About halfway through “Deathcamp,” the lead track on Tyler, the Creator’s new album Cherry Bomb, the dense, hard-charging music takes a breather so the controversial California-bred rapper can declare, “I don’t like to follow the rules/And that’s just who I am/I hope you understand.”
No doubt many don’t understand, which seems to suit Tyler just fine. His violent, surrealist dreamscapes as the leader of Hip Hop collective Odd Future and through three solo albums have been criticized for being homophobic, misogynistic, race baiting and more. To which the rapper’s typical answer is, “It was simply an, again, admittedly absurd story that was never meant to be taken seriously.”
Whether that explanation (delivered in response to backlash over an online Mountain Dew commercial, of all things) is sufficient is in the ear of the beholder, but there’s no denying the guy isn’t afraid to stir shit up, which in this age of feigned outrage and politically correct sensitivity is saying something.
Cherry Bomb is another wild ride, a meld of slanted Hip Hop in the vein of Dr. Octagon and N.E.R.D., spruced up with a host of famous guests, including Lil Wayne, ScHoolboy Q, Kanye West and Pharrell Williams. But this is Tyler’s show, his wild-eyed delivery sparing pretty much no one — from fellow rappers to college debt carriers to Kendall Jenner. Album closer “Okaga, CA” is a down-tempo, sparsely adorned jam that sounds like something the underappreciated Mike Ladd might have conjured via his semi-spoof outfit The Majesticons a dozen years earlier. It’s a radical departure from “Deathcamp,” just another sign of Tyler’s messy, often disjointed vision.
TYLER, THE CREATOR performs at Bogart’s Friday. Tickets/more info here.
This article appears in May 6-12, 2015.