Its that time again, artist Tyler, The creator has finally begun dropping teasers for his new project. Tyler shared on social media his new music video titled ‘St. Chroma’ for the suggested first single on his possible new album ‘Chromakopia’ early Wednesday morning (October 16th).
It’s been 27 months since he last dropped his own music, not including recent song features, his most recent album ‘Call Me If You Get Lost’ was released back in late June of 2021. This amazing album earned Tyler, rightfully so, the ‘Best Rap Album’ award from the 2022 ‘Grammy Awards’.
The music video itself is almost Military like. It starts off with Tyler masked up marching in this desert area to the chants of his own voice saying ‘Chromakopia’. Behind him follows a line of masked people. Their movement and discipline portray them to be soldiers. As they march in a straight line Tyler directs them straight into a shipping container with the word ‘Chromakopia’ written on the side. Which only suggests the possibility of ‘Chromakopia’ being the album name.
The track itself is only 1 minute and 24 seconds long which leaves the possibility that the entire song isn’t being played. After the chants from Tyler the track starts with a whispered flow as Tyler begins to sing. His singing is more of unintelligible rapping. Behind the whispers we hear a series of stomps and handclaps overplaying each other. Its all chaotic, but also so quiet. Tyler not once raises his voice from the whispered tone, yet the background creates such chaos.
The ranges of voices from chanted vocals to a twisted chorus give an ominous vibe to the whole song, until the song climaxes into a extremely harmonic flow to which then vocals from Daniel Caesar begin to play, “Can you feel the light inside. can you feel the fire, fire, fire”. To which all before crashes into a frantic beat. Which of course, in Tyler manner, the video ends with the container exploding into flames with the people still inside.
This news of a possible album brought Tyler fans into great shock. I spoke to ‘Nino Daniel’ a 19-year-old music lover from Chicago, who I had met at a music festival over the summer. He agreed to talk to me over the phone about his opinions on Tyler’s album announcement.
“I’m honestly kind of surprised. The last thing I heard was that he was going to be acting in a movie. I saw him comment on another artist’s Instagram post, Steve lacy, saying he never said another album was coming and that he wants to be an actress. Good vocals though. Tyler never misses.”
It’s clear that this news comes as such a surprise, but some Tyler fans have already had some suspicion as they figured out a recurrence in Tyler’s release dates. When it comes to dropping albums it seems like he drops them every 2 years, but for his 8th album, Chromakopia, he took an extra year.
I talked with Student, senior Esme Silva, at Morton West who adores Tyler, The creator. She has been following him and his music since the very start with Tyler’s 2011 group ‘Odd future’. We talked about her opinion and who she hoped to see featured in the album.
‘I love Tyler so much. I wasn’t surprised, I knew it was only a matter of time until he announced the date. I really hope to see Frank Ocean make an appearance for Tyler. If not, I better see more Daniel Caesar, Kali Uchis, and Steve Lacy. The soldiers in the video look like a lot of known artists like Kendrick Lamar and Brent Faiyaz.’
It seems like these Tyler fans are becoming as delusional as Frank Ocean fans who think he’s dropping anytime soon. Still, there’s always a possibility we can see all these amazing features. Tyler announced this Thursday (October 17th) that ‘Chromakopia’ will be released October 28th.
