How thrilling must it have been to be a young teenager in 2008, witnessing the birth of Odd Future, a Los Angeles collective of skater kids. They must have made it feel possible to do everything and be every way you wanted to but weren’t sure was allowed. I was too old to be that sort of fan when Odd Future dropped its first mix tape, but when I saw Tyler Okonma — the rapper Tyler, the Creator ­— one of the collective’s breakout stars, reclining on the couch of the reborn “Arsenio Hall Show” a few years later, feet up, explaining a youthful worldview that was as harebrained as it was shrewd, as unmannerly as it was undeniable, my first thought was that I wish he had existed when I was teenager. I needed him. Read more

How thrilling must it have been to be a young teenager in 2008, witnessing the birth of Odd Future, a Los Angeles collective of skater kids. They must have made it feel possible to do everything and be every way you wanted to but weren’t sure was allowed. I was too old to be that sort of fan when Odd Future dropped its first mix tape, but when I saw Tyler Okonma — the rapper Tyler, the Creator ­— one of the collective’s breakout stars, reclining on the couch of the reborn “Arsenio Hall Show” a few years later, feet up, explaining a youthful worldview that was as harebrained as it was shrewd, as unmannerly as it was undeniable, my first thought was that I wish he had existed when I was teenager. I needed him.

He was a force, eating cockroaches in music videos, fantasizing about murder and suicide, delighting in hiding behind a veneer of edgelord homophobic, misogynist lyrics. His was a youthful, playful, nearly theoretical form of destruction. He reveled in blurring the line between character and artist and troll, between ego and id. Yet he was so sure-handed in his artistry, so unfettered, that he was precisely what I, and probably you, could have used as a kid: someone who does not care about anyone’s rules but seems such a genius that no one opposing him could ever be taken seriously. Your parents can ground you; they can’t do a thing to Tyler. Thus: He represented freedom. A grisly and dark one, for sure, but a freedom nonetheless.

His growing up came in stages. On earlier albums like “Bastard” (2009) and “Goblin” (2011), he is still thrilled by the unassailable powers of potty mouth, enchanted by the possibility of scandalizing people in a way that rap used to but hadn’t in years. On “Cherry Bomb” (2015) and “Flower Boy” (2017), he’s thrilled by the power of music itself, and perhaps by the power of success, too. On “Flower Boy,” in particular, he is writing about a male lover — plot twist! — and is now brimming with questions about life and love, beauty and bees. The annoying-little-brother skater Tyler is certainly still in the building, but quite often his inclusion feels like an afterthought, a decision made in post­production, a conciliation to the fans that stop him at Six Flags and ask for pictures in hopes of validating their own flagging youth.

Then comes last year’s “IGOR,” and it’s an entirely different game. For many longtime Tyler fans, the album felt like an insult: Where are the bars, the bangers, the middle fingers? But as anyone doing a close reading of Tyler’s discography knows, the real “IGOR” was with us all along. Here the production wizardry and pure musicality he explored on “Flower Boy” meets the earnestness of “Cherry Bomb.” And the fact that the man who once rhymed “Aretha” with “urethra” had now made an entire album about one single breakup? Well, that’s the biggest middle finger to anyone missing the old Tyler.

All this was brought into vivid relief on the album’s first and only single, “Earf­quake,” anchored by a pop-friendly three-chord progression, vocals by the Gap Band legend Charlie Wilson and a verse from the rapper Playboi Carti delivered so breezily as to almost be a parody of a Playboi Carti verse. Tyler later admitted that he originally wrote it for Justin Bieber or Rihanna, both of whom passed before he took it himself. The Gap Band influence is strong: You can easily superimpose Tyler’s chorus over the verse chords from one of its biggest hits, “Outstanding” (1982), and Wilson’s influential voice technique — later imitated by the likes of Keith Sweat and Aaron Hall of Guy — is present here, in a telescopic callback to the late ’80s New Jack Swing he helped inspire.

For me though, what hits hardest about “Earf­quake” is that Tyler presents a version of himself with no room to spare. The song, like much of the album, finds him at a loss. He has ditched the safety of youthful disaffection to seek love and some version of earnestness — but, surprise, it hurts. Such is the cost of genuinely trying to care. “Don’t leave,” he begs, “it’s my fault.” This is a Tyler without an answer. The certainty is gone, replaced with pleading. He is refreshingly, if painfully, not in control. We’ve already heard angry Tyler, swaggering Tyler, depressive and violent Tyler, double-middle-finger Tyler and I’m-too-smart-for-all-this Tyler. “Earf­quake” is the first time we hear a Tyler in need of someone else. The ground beneath his feet has indeed been shaken.

This pop-fueled exploration into genuine vulnerability — not in the sense of baring all, but in the sense of being open to being harmed — has reached a broader audience than any of Tyler’s other work ever has. “IGOR” was the first No.1 album of his decade-plus career; it netted him a Grammy. Musically, production-wise, it’s his most skilled creation, and literarily it’s his most completely thought-through. It can’t be everyone’s favorite. But since his first solo effort in 2009, Tyler has gone from hating himself to loving himself to loving someone else — with all the destruction and emotional detritus that brings. I can’t think of a better definition of growing up than that.