Surfing an underground buzz since the beginning of the year, LA rapper Tyler The Creator has become a bona fide star with the release of Goblin, which has become a cult hit on both sides of the Atlantic, hitting the UK Top 30 and the US Top 5 – although, interestingly, it failed to crack the Irish Top 40. Anyway, when you add the potent whiff of controversy to his undoubted talent – he has been accused of misogyny and homophobia in his lyrics, and has probably been arrested since you started reading this review – it becomes clear that we have brand new musical outlaw to contend with.
Brimming with wit and charisma, Tyler is a brilliant character, and recently gave the best quote I’ve heard in an interview in years. Asked to describe his music, he replied, “If Hitler buttfucked Dr. Seuss, then went to a jazz concert and stabbed a fucking baby – that’s not what it would sound like.” Instead, the rapper cites a mix of Stereolab, Portishead, Stevie Wonder and a lot of French jazz as his inspiration.
On the musical and production front, Goblin is a tour de force, deftly mixing hip hop beats, quirky synths, horror-movie ambience and, of course, Tyler’s attitudinal vocals. The homophobia and misogyny accusations are completely wide of the mark – one of the members of Tyler The Creator’s hip hop crew is, er, a lesbian – and anyone thinks that he uses the words “faggot” and “gay” as anything other than playground jibes is looking for a fight in all the wrong places.
Tyler’s lyrical abilities are displayed to their full effect on the awesome ‘Yonkers’, the song and video of the year so far (ten million YouTube views and counting), which finds him unloading the full weight of his psychosis over a brilliant jazz/hip hop soundscape that would do Public Enemy production crew The Bomb Squad proud.
The other lyrical standout is the brilliantly nihilistic punk anthem ‘Radicals’, an aggressively anti-authority rant worthy of Nirvana, The Sex Pistols or Marilyn Manson. Satisfyingly, the spoken word intro features the phrase “Fuck Bill O’Reilly!” while the storming chorus features the t-shirt friendly slogan, “Kill people, burn shit, fuck school!”
A sonic and lyrical rollercoaster ride, Goblin is the best album I have heard so far this year. In fact, the most sickening aspect of the whole record is that the young dirty bastard is only 20.