CHROMAKOPIA
Top Track: Sticky
Tyler, the Creator is an artist whose music has existed on the periphery of my listening for years. I’d come across his earlier work in various live-music settings, but it never quite held my attention — until Sticky from his 2024 studio release, Chromakopia. True to its name, the track stuck with me almost immediately, and that fixation was only amplified by seeing hip hop dancers choreographing to its chorus across social media. What began as an attachment to a single track quickly expanded once I recognised several familiar artists featured across the album.
Beyond Sticky’s initial pull, Chromakopia revealed itself as a tightly considered body of work. Tyler’s knack for carefully chosen samples and his tendency to disrupt conventional rap flows are present throughout, but the album also functions as a concept piece. Narrated by his mother, it reads almost like a diary — reflections on his formative years, reworked into a creative process and engineered into an album that invites listeners into his internal world. Known for pushing genre boundaries in his earlier work, Tyler manages to retain that experimental edge here while keeping the album cohesive and engaging.
After Sticky, Noid quickly became a favourite (sorry Doechii — Balloon still holds a firm place in my top three). The stacked harmonies immediately caught my attention, and the contrast introduced by the start-stop rhythmic feel established a recurring theme that pulled me in early on. The twangy guitar textures, paired with bold rhythmic movement, gave the track a distinct identity that stood out even within a full album listen-through.
There’s an intentional messiness to Chromakopia — a slightly frazzled quality that mirrors the introspection at its core. That sense of disorder feels purposeful, echoing the confusion of adolescence that Tyler seems intent on exploring through his production choices. With melodic vamps sitting alongside rhythm-heavy patterns, the album remains dynamic and unpredictable without ever feeling unfocused.
My previous hesitation toward Tyler, the Creator was rooted in a belief that I simply didn’t have the capacity to fully appreciate rap. As my listening habits have (thankfully) evolved, I’ve found real satisfaction in engaging with rap from a production-led perspective, appreciating its musicality in ways that differ from sung-through albums. Chromakopia feels particularly well-suited to large live settings — festival stages, especially — where the distinct instrumentation and rhythmic shifts of each track could translate into moments of collective energy and release.
