Chromokopia dropped last Monday, and it was kinda gay, tbh.
Tyler, The Creator’s seventh studio album introduces us to St. Chroma, a masked version of Tyler at his creative peak. By the second song, “Rah Tah Tah,” (which bangs), he’s claiming Odd Future as “the biggest out the city after Kenny, that’s a fact now.” However, the mask quickly begins to crack.
In “Rah Tah Tah,” the progressively chaotic ad-libs start to get more anxious. By the fourth chorus its difficult to tell if he whispers, “I want that pussy,” “I’m a pussy,” or the enigmatic “I’m pussy.” When we get to “Noid,” accompanied by the music video, we see that the freedom and success causes St. Chroma to be increasingly paranoid about who might be working to take him down.
In “Darling, I,” the tone begins to shift from trapped-out marching and rock instrumentals to synthesized neo-soul. St. Chroma begins to try and take the mask off. THEN it starts to get a little more queer.
The second verse of “Darling, I” explains “I drive my Bimmer in the summer when I’m ready to drift/LeFerrari handle better and its pretty as shit/ Love ‘em all for different reasons at the same damn time.” I.e. fuck monogamy, which Tyler says outright after comparing his lovers to cars.
But the way Tyler looks at monogamy extends past a youthful struggle to remain loyal. In the bridge, the narrator says, “Everybody’s different, you know? And it’s not just sex/ I get different things from different people, and I want you to explore too.” It moves towards creating a meaningful relationship outside of het-normative structures.
As the album progresses, it repeatedly speaks to an often-frustrating sexual fluidity, like in the refrain “I’m that n—and that bitch.” The narrator struggles to enter into middle-adulthood, feeling unable to settle down, all while watching straight friends begin to build families.
If there’s a song that encapsulates the freedom of bisexual identity, its Doechii and Tyler’s “Balloon.” The song, with instrumentals that feel like mellowed out hyperpop, has lines like “Like bells during December, I sleigh/ and I don’t even like girls, bitch,” from Tyler, or Doechii’s “I’m a bi bitch, need that pussy now/ If he is gay, then I am gay, and we are nouns.” The whole song is about a hilarious and slightly bitter sexual freedom that frees them from rejection.
But in contrast, “Hey Jane” describes an accidental pregnancy with a partner and the feelings of terror and excitement on both sides, knowing that it was not a relationship that could raise a kid, yet also being excited about the possibility of a “shortcut to forever.” The song is highly critical, envious, and afraid of a conventional straight maturity the narrator struggles to feel prepared for or even desirous of.
In “Take Your Mask Off,” he raps about a preacher with a nuclear family: “got a wife, got a kid, but you be fuckin’ them boys … back on that religious shit as soon as you cum.” In another verse he mentions a wife in another family who “want your life back and a massage/Tired of bein’ at home, personality gone.”
As he edges into deciding his legacy on a larger scale, Tyler criticizes the heteropatriarchy and how it crushes authenticity. It repeatedly proclaims the freedom Tyler has earned creatively and socially in the last 13 years. Introspectively, he then explores the shadow of that liberation in the lack of meaning from a conventional straight family structure. In the end, on “I Hope You Find Your Way Home,” he leaves the conflict unresolved while he worries about not having kids before being “old and washed up.” He also notes how his influence has grown past rap. The narrator raps, “No Met Gala, but I’m everybody mood board,” and later in the outro, we get a quote from his mother saying, “There’s no words right now how I feel/Do your thing, just keep shining.”
The queerness on the album comes from his struggle to find meaning beyond building a conventional family, where both his career and his sexual fluidity make being a conventional husband impossible. In an album that weaves together pop anthems like “Rah Tah Tah” and “Balloon” with introspective songs like, “Hey Jane” and “Take Your Mask Off,” we see Tyler at the top of his game while still remaining subversive.
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