Monday October 28th 2024, Tyler, The Creator released his eighth studio album titled: CHROMAKOPIA. According to Vulture, before Tyler headlined for Coachella 2024, he said that he was not going to release any music this year.
The release of this album broke Tyler’s streak of dropping albums every other year on an odd year. His CALL ME IF YOU GOT LOST: The Estate Sale deluxe album came out just last year making a year and a half difference. Every single album of his came out two years after each other on an odd year, except for Wolf and Wolf + Instrumentals both in 2013.
The release of CHROMAKOPIA was very purposeful. Many artists will drop music on Friday’s at midnight because it will give them “the best shot of charting”. Due to the coming weekend, it’s thought to be played from being off school or work. Tyler, The Creator steered in a different direction.
During a recent interview, Tyler explains how the weekend listening is “passive listening”, and the people are not fully immersing themselves into the music. His thought process on releasing music at the beginning of the week is that listeners will play the music on the way to work or school. With the commute varying from thirty minutes to an hour, Tyler believes with the time crunch, “like procrastination, [someone] could get more done even with listening”.
Tyler, The Creator has emphasized in all recent interviews that he wants people to really dive into the album with no outside distractions or opinions of other people. On the first day of CHROMAKOPIA’S release, he did not make the features visible on any music platforms. Sometime on Tuesday, they were made visible. Assumingly so, listeners go in without a bias of each song.
There was a lot of assumption on who was going to be seen on this album. On October 16th, Tyler posted the first snippet of the song, “St. Chroma”. The clip was only one minute and twenty-five seconds long, while the whole song is over three minutes long. The video included Tyler being followed by ten others that were wearing full black face covers under suits. Social media users were quick to try to figure out who the people behind Tyler could be, hoping they would be the features on the album.
Some major speculations were: Frank Ocean, Steve Lacy, Kendrick Lamar, and Daniel Caesar. CHROMAKOPIA actually features: Daniel Caesar, Teezo Touchdown, GloRilla, Sexyy Red, LaToiya Williams, ScHoolboy Q, Santigold, Lola Young, Doechii, and many others who helped put it all together.
A big inspiration Tyler got for the album was from The Neptunes, Pharrell WIllaims and Chad Hugo. They had a big influence on the sound that Tyler went for on this album, as well. Lampoon Magazine described it as R&B styles with a piano that “carries a jazzy flavor”.
There are several times throughout Tyler’s newest album where lyrics are reflecting old lyrics from his 2019 album IGOR. One example is “St. Chroma” and “What’s Good”. The lyrics in “St. Chrome” is “Can you feel the light” and in “What’s Good” it’s “I see the light”. Another example is “Thought I Was Dead” and “NEW MAGIC WAND”. The lyrics read: “I don’t wanna be found” and “I wanna be found”. Some fans on social media have speculated that CHROMAKOPIA is a sequel storyline to IGOR.
There is no true evidence or confirmation from Tyler, The Creator himself.
On TikTok, listeners have pointed out many meanings and themes that this album showcases throughout. Tyler explained at his listening party on October 27, “that early idea for his eighth album was for it to be an homage to the very streets we were standing on in Inglewood”. By the end of the production of this album, it turned into “a vacation hangover, coming home to find the real world and all its stresses lying in wait” in the words of GQ magazine. He still brought to light his upbringing in L.A. and other life hardships that he has faced.
According to The Observer, in multiple songs, it seems that Tyler is having a conversation with his stage presence (Tyler, The Creator) and his true self (Tyler Okonma). Throughout the music video for the song “Noid”, Tyler’s character seems to be going back and forth between a mask and maskless. In the video, it also touches on fans pushing his boundaries and paranoia. Recently, Tyler has mentioned how weird fans have gotten towards celebrities and expresses that he feels like they should “go get a life” in an interview with SpringHill.
As of November 5th, 2024, there are only two music videos released by Tyler, The Creator from the album; “Noid” and “St. Chroma”.
CHROMAKOPIA has encapsulated the feeling of coming back to reality, and the hardships that just comes with life, specifically coming from Tyler’s personal experiences.
The title has been speculated to come from the words “chrome” and “cornucopia”. Lampoon Magazine explains that “chrome” in music represents the eighth note and in visual art, it shows vividness in color. Cornucopia represents abundance, wealth, and prosperity. Later Lampoon Magazine continues to say CHROMAKOPIA is “a wealth of colors, emerging from a black-and-white world”, which Tyler has demonstrated through the music videos. In “noid”, his character will go back and forth between a black and white world to being in color.
Another observation that fans made is that CHROMAKOPIA and IGOR are the inverted colors of each other (green and pink), that the albums coexist with each other. Green and pink are contrasts of each other, and green is most commonly used in film production as a contrasting color. Lampoon Magazine points out that Tyler could’ve chosen green as an opposition to his past characters.
Everyone’s theorizing and gathering different meanings for each song is the wonderful thing of interpreting music. Whether Tyler, The Creator will ever publicize his exact thoughts on each song or what he wanted his fans to feel while listening, it is still enjoyable to listen and illuminate on the music.
If not already, take an hour of the day to sit down and listen to Tyler, The Creator’s CHROMAKOPIA.
