Flower Boy is both exceedingly lush and beautiful in addition to following a line of cohesion Tyler’s lacked to this point. His earlier efforts, particularly Cherry Bomb in 2015, had moments of sheer brilliance, but they were few and far between. This sort of backwards maturity proliferates throughout the record, not only in the lyrical content but in production as well. Tyler’s development lies in his ability to examine his own sexuality and questioning not through inflammatory speech, but through the content of his work. Within the context of Flower Boy, it’s much trickier than that. ” At the time, it seemed like he was just fucking around. ” In 2015, Tyler tweeted, “ I TRIED TO COME OUT THE DAMN CLOSET LIKE FOUR DAYS AGO AND NO ONE CARED HAHAHHAHAHA. On “ I Ain’t Got Time! ” he raps, “ Next line will have ’em like ‘Whoa’ / I’ve been kissing white boys since 2004. He frequently alludes to his fluid sexuality. He goes full-on existential from the album’s outset, examining his relationship to his fans and thanking the girls that have made him feel like somebody on opener “Foreward.” On the next track, “Where This Flower Blooms,” he enlists Frank Ocean on the chorus and turns into the role model he’s always rebelled against when he raps, “Tell these black kids they could be who they are / Dye your hair blue / Shit, I’ll do it, too / Look, I smell like Chanel.” From beginning to end there’s a discernible aesthetic, and when he strays from it-on a track like “Who Dat Boy,” in which he refers back to the horrorcore strut of his early output-there’s deep thought behind the shift.
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Tyler’s always been an immensely talented producer and rapper, but he’s never put together an album as cohesively as he does here. He’s taking his work more seriously, and we should too. With the release of his fourth LP, Flower Boy, he has finally eschewed the post-curricular fireworks in favor of a more mature sound. It’s not that Tyler doesn’t take his music seriously, but the results have never quite backed the fire of his personality.
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He catapulted himself to great heights in large part thanks to his aggressively bombastic music, but his character has been equally important to his success-if not more so. It’s easy to fall under the weight of Tyler, The Creator’s persona when listening to and thinking about his music.