By Kyle Mantha

Tyler, The Creator is not often seen as a serious artist. This is very unfortunate because he is one of the most gifted people in the industry. Since he was a teenager he’s been writing and producing all of his own music, designing the cover art, directing his own videos (as well as plenty of videos for other artists), as well as doing numerous other side projects like his clothing line Golf and a cartoon called The Jellies. Even if you subtract all of Tyler’s other talents, he’s still an insanely talented musician, and he deserves to be treated as such.



His latest release, Cherry Bomb, was not as well received as his other works. Wolf is generally regarded as his best album, and I have to disagree. Wolf is definitely my *favourite* Tyler album, but it’s not his best. His best is, in fact, Cherry Bomb. Despite it’s negative reviews and generally poor fan reception, Cherry Bomb is Tyler’s most ambitious offering to date, and is undoubtedly one of the best albums of the past 5 years.

For starters, the production on this thing is absolutely incredible. Tyler has always been a great producer, but he really brought it to the next level with Cherry Bomb. Gone are the plastic, hollow drums and cheap sounding VSTs of earlier OF releases. Instead, what Tyler gave us, was an album chock full of soaring string sections, textured keyboards, and songwriting abilities that are well beyond his age.

Despite the album’s obvious strengths, Cherry Bomb was labelled as a poor effort. Many fans and critics couldn’t get past some of the more experimental tracks, as well as the lo-fi mixing style that Tyler chose to utilize. A common complaint was that the songs all sounded like copycats of Pharrell and N.E.R.D, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Sure, Tyler is obviously influenced by Pharrell, and tends to wear his influences on his sleeve. But even Pharrell, the OG of childish sounding hip hop, doesn’t bring this level of innocence and fun to a record. Tyler takes Pharrell’s formula and shows it to us through the eyes of a young kid with the world in his palms. Even with a Roy Ayers feature, Tyler manages to still sound like the same kid making music in his bedroom, and that’s because he is.

Cherry Bomb is easily the most honest album from Tyler. You can tell that this is the album he’s been wanting to make since he was a kid, and he really poured his heart and soul into it. On Cherry Bomb, Tyler stopped trying to be someone else. There are no more needless, semi-serious posse cuts. There are no more forced horrorcore-esque rhymes about murder and graphic violence. There are no more tough-talking tracks filled with faux braggadocio. Instead, Tyler opts to be the young hopeful dreamer with stars in his eyes and love in his heart.

But that’s not to say that Cherry Bomb is without its funny moments. Songs like The Brown Stains and Blow My Load still carry that same childish humor from Tyler that we’ve come to know and love, he just approaches it in a more subtle way. It’s less off putting because it’s less in your face.

Being more lyrically minimalistic is definitely something that Tyler focused on for Cherry Bomb. The vocals are mixed very low on most tracks, which was done to force the listener to focus on the production and the sound, rather than simply the lyrics. Many thought that this stylistic choice from Tyler was miss, but in my opinion, it suits him perfectly, while still flying in the face of everything we expect from him. We expected Tyler to make an album full of immature, tasteless raps with overblown production. What Tyler gave us instead was something completely different. He put the music and the feeling at the forefront, effectively allowing the edginess to take a backseat.

So, while many think that Cherry Bomb is a poorly mixed N.E.R.D ripoff, it’s actually Tyler’s best and most ambitious album. Perhaps with the release of Cherry Bomb’s making-of documentary being just around the corner, people will learn to appreciate this album a little more after seeing the work that went into it.