And now might be the moment to wonder how much of this is Tyler? How much of this might have gone through his head in the currents of a fervent emotion? And how much is just conjured up, boisterous bullshit or an attempt at an un-censored social commentary? My instinct is that Goblin is vastly made of the latter – that and a mountain of teen angst. Meanwhile Transylvania is perverted, twisted, misogynistic and contentious here he’s plainly at the extremes of his humanity. She and the young love inspired Her demonstrates he’s as dick whipped as the next guy sometimes. The vitriolic but hollow tirade eventually distils to a righteous message: “Don’t let nobody tell you you can’t be what the fuck you want.” Before he deadpans “I’m a fucking unicorn and fuck anybody who says I’m not”.Īnd from that point the record follows out, utterly organic and with little grating tension and just a few slacker moments unsurprisingly generated in its somewhat monstrous 1 hour, 13 minute running time (also its most significant mistake). So Goblin is just honest in the cruelest and cleanest sense – at times it’s angry, just take the outright hostility of Radicals with its unbending chorus of “Kill People, Burn Shit, Fuck School”. Yes there are the traditional boasts, but even these are darker and more intriguing than a million Kanye West slights could ever be, such as describing how “competition is missing like that nigga my mum fucked”. Goblin opens with “I’m not a fucking role model / I’m a nineteen year old fucking emotional coaster with pipe-dreams” and in ten seconds flat Goblin has set itself apart from every other Billboard 200 rap album. They don’t give a S**t what you think of them, they just need you to know. Tyler Okonma Tyler, The Creator Ace The Wolf of Wolf Gang fame – the entire schizophrenic assortment of aliases are all assembled to tell you about themselves, everything, every dark thought, every wandering anger, all in unrelenting detail and tipped with a razor sharp wit. Tyler – and Tron, his troublesome, provocative super-ego – would like to invite you to therapy, not yours. This album, however, will probably offend you it takes a very tolerant type not to flair at some of Tyler’s more testing flows – providing you don’t, you’ll find instead a great record by one of the most exciting talents in urban culture right now.
This is a first-rate album, a high quality article that aims to push the boundaries of rap without diving headlong into incongruent and joyless experimentalism. He’s tweeted about finding young Leonardo DiCaprio “beautiful,” and says, “I’m currently lookin’ for ’95 Leo” on “Who Dat Boy.” He’s also frequently joked about his sexuality through social media and even in an interview with Rolling Stone (in which, when asked whether his propensity for “gay humor” comes from suppressed feelings, he says he would “one hundred percent go gay” for DiCaprio circa 1996).First, a warning. Recently, though, Tyler’s feelings toward homosexuality appear to be coming into focus - or at least to the extent that they apply to one celebrity in particular. On Goblin, he used anti-gay language more than 200 times, prompting both furor and assurances that he is “not homophobic,” and in 2015 he was criticized for releasing a shirt that reimagined a white supremacist logo in rainbow colors (he also happened to be holding hands with another man in the press photo). That said, if there is an intentional coming-out narrative in Flower Boy, it’s complicated somewhat by Tyler’s history of casually using derogatory gay slurs as well as making opaque statements about his sexuality. The album’s opener, “Foreword,” addresses the women that Tyler has been with in the past, with him rapping, “Shout-out to the girls that I lead on / For occasional head and always keeping my bed warm / And trying they hardest to keep my head on straight.” And on “I Ain’t Got Time,” Tyler’s bars seem to be even more transparent: “Next line, I'll have ’em like whoa / I've been kissing white boys since 2004,” he raps.
Most of the conversation has centered on the track “Garden Shed,” a song with lyrics about hidden love and feeling misunderstood that have caused many to speculate whether Tyler is coming out as gay or bisexual: “Garden shed for the garçons / Them feelings I was guardin' / Heavy on my mind / All my friends lost / They couldn't read the signs,” he raps on the song’s second verse.īut the hints on Flower Boy go beyond that one line.
But in the early aftermath of the leak, other Flower Boy tracks have come to dominate the discussion around the album.