Tyler, the Creator - Cherry Bomb (2015)
So Tyler returns once again with another album, and surprisingly enough.. THE BEATS ON THIS ALBUM AREN'T DOGSHIT AT ALL!! Ain't that a welcome change of pace?! Someone must've told him about how to access the OTHER presets in FL Studio or something because this is Tyler's best album on an instrumental standpoint, with it taking influence from jazz, industrial, and other shit, making it quite colorful to listen to, and it's also complimented by Tyler's best rapping, and the best features of any of his albums. It has everything I wanted Tyler to do.. On paper. Paper that easily rips when you try to write on it.
As a guy who's disliked everything Tyler has put out aside from 2009's "Bastard", I can immediately tell you that this album is actually good, but not without a catch: It's not ACTUALLY good despite being good! What I mean by that is that the entire album has a huge problem plaguing it like a disease: The mixing. Tyler intentionally made the mixing on this album awful as shit, with the vocals generally being a lot quieter than the instrumental, because Tyler wanted the album to be beat-centric or whatever, but it ends up biting him in the ass, because as a hip-hop listener, you naturally wanna hear the lyrics, and when they're so quiet, they turn into a distraction as you try to listen to them, and totally distract you from the beat or even just enjoying the fucking song at times.
Seriously. It's as if Tyler spent a long time making an incredible, huge cake and then upon presenting it to his guests at his dinner party, pulled his pants down and shat all over it, while going "HAHA I TROL U THIS IS HOW I WANT IT I BET U DON'T GET IT where are you guys going :(" but nonetheless, there's a few tracks that still manage to shine. "The Brown Stains of Darkeese Latifah Part 6–12 (Remix) (Feat. ScHoolboy Q)" has Tyler's BEST BEAT BY FAR. Not even a contest: That beat is absolutely bombastic as shit and is entirely unapologetic about how hard it bangs in your speakers. I was, and still am genuinely surprised by just how damn good it is. This, unlike the title track (which is a horrible, loud, distorted piece of shit just for the sake of being it) encompasses to me what the album is: Experimental, abrasive, and obscene.
The album does have a good vibe to it, if it just had better mixing, it'd probably even be great. It'd probably be some shit I'd listen to often. Tyler didn't just have the chance to make a good album: Tyler HAD ALREADY MADE A GOOD ALBUM and wanted to fuck it up for whatever reason. I don't know why. I get artistic choices and all, but I still can criticize them, and as such, the album sounds like shit, and I don't really like it even though I -KNOW- I would otherwise. I know it's a good album if it had actually been cared for, but nope. I guess now it's about time I fully give up my expectations on Tyler because it seems like even if he was given an entire suitcase of hundred dollar bills that could be donated to an orphanage, he'd get some gasoline and burn all of them in a heartbeat, in an attempt to disappoint someone, somewhere.
6/10
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