Where to start? Rarely do I review albums by artists who have generated such a confusing mix of controversy and hype, all while managing to remain a fairly sincere and sincerely weird popular musician. There’s a lot of context for Wolf to work through: the meteoric rise of Odd Future cohort Frank Ocean, a television show, and a lot of uncertainty as to whether he could keep doing what he was doing without becoming a parody about himself. But Wolf manages to subvert the context from which it has risen; rather than cracking – or bloating – under the pressures of a social stigmatization and new industry resources at his disposal, Tyler the Creator has produced an album based on a singular, startlingly clear, vision. Wolf is idiosyncratic, weird, and absolutely stunning.
“Jamba” has a sincerely infectious beat, swapping between a guttural bassline that rests at the bottom of your throat, and early-90s arcade game style arpeggiated synth lines. Tyler the Creator’s vocal delivery on “Jamba” is predictably aggressive; though certainly less overtly homophobic and violent than in the past (Okonma has vehemently denied charges of being either) the lyrics are still buoyantly juvenile, if a little all over the place. “Jamba” and the similarly austere and perfectly Vice City-esque “Cowboy” set the precedent for an album of amazing production, and occasional lyrical spasms that work to undermine its credibility.
Wolf is a beautiful album, with one of the strongest and most coherent aesthetics of any recent hip hop release, its particular and specific vision creditable to the fact of Okonma being its sole producer (with the exception of a song produced by Left brain). The album’s sound is highly synthetic, with an implicit naturalness to it, perhaps owing a lot to my childhood associations with the bright optimism of mid-80s synth pop music. Rather than come off as cheesy, the beats on Wolf are delicate and wistful – with songs that are Spartan and only occasionally giving – showing that Okonma’s aesthetic sense as a producer continues to be outsider-inclined.
Wolf has less to brag about as far as lyrics are concerned. “Domo23” provides something of a commentary on Odd Future’s success, and on the perceived homophobia and misogyny of a lot of his earlier music, but it’s a lyrical jumble. The message seems to be that Tyler the Creator is just going to continue to do as he pleases – but that he does, quite cynically and smartly, understand exactly what people think of him. The very personal topics of “Answer” – absent fathers and friends struggling with excessive lifestyles – are not uncommon in popular music. But Tyler deals with things a little differently, approaching these subjects with the kind of excited aplomb and sense of cheesy irony he smears onto every one of his songs.
“Colossus” follows a similar lyrical progression to Eminem’s “Stan,” but Tyler’s delivery is so manic that the impact of the song’s more explicitly upsetting moments are pared down. “PartyIsntOver/Campfire/Bimmer” is probably the album’s most significant track from a production standpoint, and it (amazingly) pinpoints the entire thing to music you might find in Chrono Trigger. Ultimately, this is a dense release, and one with so much non-musical context surrounding it that it’s difficult to know what needs to be said about it. Taken at nothing more or less than face value, out of the context of Tyler the Creator’s strangely provocative strange skater boy personality, Wolf is an absolutely stunning album; an album whose intense aesthetic could only have come from a producer with a startling, singular vision.
4/5 bars