It has been 1 week since Tyler the Creator’s 5th studio album debuted on the 17th May 2019, and it’s time to give the album a review since I’ve had the time to listen to it multiple times.
IGOR is a love themed album which covers the different emotions and stages of feelings Tyler the Creator goes through with his love interest as they break up and, by the end of the album, see if they can still be friends after everything they’ve been through together.
The album is very well polished, with the length not being too short or too long (10 tracks excluding the intro and a talking interlude) This makes the album a good length for a full listen from start to finish, just as Tyler wanted and expressed in a twitter post prior to the album’s release, shown below.
Some songs that really stood out to me in IGOR include EARFQUAKE (with a fantastic implementation of Playboi Carti), I THINK, WHAT’S GOOD, GONE GONE / THANK YOU, and ARE WE STILL FRIENDS? I’m still trying to warm up to a fan favourite NEW MAGIC WAND.
I think the song GONE GONE / THANK YOU shows how far Tyler The Creator has come from his cockroach eating ways in his 2011 music video of Yonkers. Tyler has really matured both lyrically and musically, and it’s a great thing to hear, as you can hear the effort put into IGOR as a whole. I really wasn’t sure what to expect with IGOR, and wasn’t sure if Tyler The Creator could build on and improve from his previous album Flower Boy, but he’s done it.
One complaint I did have was on the track I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE, with the repeating of “’Cause I don’t love you anymore” every 6 seconds in some sections of the track, especially the intensity of some of the ways it’s said, it felt a bit obnoxious and out of place throughout the calm undertone of the song as a whole.
In the end I’ve decided to give this album a 8.5/10. IGOR is a solid album and builds on from his previous highly rated album Flower Boy, in the sense of how both are musically complicated, well structured, and both told their own stories respectively.
In the future songs such as I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE and NEW MAGIC WAND may grow on me more.
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