Hey all, it's very late but since the website is finally out I figured I'd start us off with what I thought would be the popular album of the year until GNX came out, Chromakopia by Tyler, the Creator. This album is a very sonically and lyrically diverse one with a variety of focuses.

Tyler runs the gamut on this album, starting with the marching beats on "St. Chroma" that really set the stage for the artistic flair that's going to permeate the entire project. Next up, we have "Rah Tah Tah", which is very Cherry Bomb-esque. I really enjoyed getting a harder beat after the relatively chill work we saw on CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, IGOR, and Flower Boy. After that we have the album's lead single, "Noid", which lyrically is not dissimilar to other Tyler tracks we've seen before like "Colossus" but seems to take a slightly different direction.

After this we've got a great four-song run from "Darling, I" to "Judge Judy". "Darling, I" has an excellent Teezo Touchdown feature, "Hey Jane" is probably the weakest song on the run in my opinion but still well-composed, and both "I Killed You" and "Judge Judy" are interesting listens and very well-written. After that we have probably the most memorable song on the album, "Sticky", which comes with a predictably ehhh Sexyy Red feature but two powerful guest verses from GloRilla and Lil Wayne. The horns on this album stood out to me heavily, it felt very much like one of those early 2000s posse cut songs that you might find on a Wayne project or feature. The instrumentation on this one definitely stands out.

To conclude, we have a couple very powerful and introspective songs in the form of "Take Your Mask Off", "Tomorrow", "Like Him", and "I Hope You Find Your Way Home". These are, in typical Tyler fashion, punctuated by the hard-hitting "Thought I Was Dead" and "Balloon", which has an amazing Doechii feature.

All in all, Tyler's most recent project is very strong and has lots of stylistic variation along with masterful songwriting. Most of the songs are memorable either through lyrics or instrumentation, and they each come with a specific story that Tyler wants to tell. However, I felt like he could have pushed the sound a bit more in places, and the style that he chose to puruse for the album wasn't as fleshed out as it could have been. Some of the songs were also weak compared to the heavy hitters on this album. And so for those reasons I'm thinking a moderate to strong 8 for this one.