Cherry Bomb - Tyler The Creator (2015)

So I wanted to do my next discog-ology on Tyler. He’s a larger-than-life guy, maybe not a genius but definitely very good in many different arenas of creativity. I’m a big fan. However, when I got back to his first major release, Goblin, I quickly realized that there was no way for me to write about it. It’s so raw and offensive and troubling (and also funny and brilliant) that I just couldn’t find anything to talk about that wasn’t mostly trigger warnings or apologies.

OK, skip to Wolf, the folllow-up. No, that’s pretty much more of the same.

So I ended up starting with Cherry Bomb. This is meant to be more of a showcase for Tyler as a producer rather than an endless firehose of frightening id that we got before. It’s a powerhouse of straight-up industrial and hardcore noise with an unbelievable low-end. The lyrics are still pretty brutal: juvenile and funny in places, scary as hell in others. By this point he was well-known enough to attract features from some of the biggest names in hip hop, which helps that column a bit.

The point is, Tyler is one of those artists who’s going to do exactly what he wants, and you just have to sit back and watch the ride.

I don’t know where the best place to start is, so I just had to pick and go with it.

Discog-ology

Next: Flower Boy

Previous: As outlined, if you’re up for some serious challenges to propriety and decency, or you’re up for a debate about the limits of freedom of speech, you can try the back to back mental health abuses of Goblin and Wolf. Caveat auditor.