Released

Picking one particular Tyler, the Creator album instead of just letting all the good, bad, ugly, surprising, funny, dumb, and beautiful elements of that whole Odd Future phenomenon seems like a tough order if you want to personify just what Tyler brought to this strange hip-hop world (and what he carried over from the old one). Suffice it to say that if you first knew him as the sick-joke-enthusiast enfant terrible antagonist of a thousand panicking 2012 thinkpieces, the empathy and desire and regret in his relationship-struggle record IGOR should reverberate with the shock of the perpetually new. What’s left from those old days, fortunately, is the fact that as a musician he operates (and sings) like someone who was never told that The Neptunes and MF DOOM were supposed to serve different markets.

Nate Patrin