I spelled it wrong on purpose. It's Mo's Media after all. I apologize if you didn't see the first warnings, but this feature is explicit for the sake of accuracy to the artist. I love green. I also apologize for any clashes of shades.
Now, for the last time...
!PARENTAL ADVISORY: EXPLICIT CONTENT!
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“You are the light.”
“It’s not on you, it’s in you.”
“Don’t you ever in your motherfucking life dim your light for nobody.”
CHROMOKOOOOPIA, CHROMOKOOOOPIA
You can give a message without wasting people’s time. You can gather people together to say the right thing. Spike Lee and Jordan Peele and Regina King and Ana Duvernay and Emma Seligman and Christopher Storer and Luca Guadagnino and Tim Robinson and Jeff Bridges are talking to us.
Now, so is Tyler, The Creator in his newest album, Chromakopia.
The eighth studio album from Tyler Okonma begins with “St. Chroma,” the name of a masked character he portrays in the corresponding music videos. The album opens with the wise words of his mother Bonita Smith, imbuing the listener with musings one would hear under a late-night kitchen light. The angelic vocals of Daniel Caesar echo behind Tyler's declarations of perseverance,
“Can you feel the light inside?
Can you feel that fire?"
and what sounds like boots stomp towards a destined end. Growing up, the dichotomy of overwhelming guilt and grace reverberates as we prove ourselves to others.
“Do I keep the light on, or do I gracefully bow out?”
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(Reddit @fromthetemple)
But what is life but proving ourselves to...ourselves? Feeling misunderstood, now we’re angry with second track “Rah Tah Tah.”
“She ain’t never met no one who talk like that.”
The concept of hubris is touched throughout all gothic literature, Frankenstein to The Monk. You can be raised by a single mother, hate men, and choose to internalize that hate.
“No, me and crack don’t share daddies, but we really twins.”
Him and his friends friends were told they were rambunctious, yet the life they lived proves them to be victorious in spite of this dismissal.
“Me and Lionel Boyce in drama class, my boy can act now.”
FX and Hulu’s The Bear has won 21 Emmys in the span of its 3-season run. Boyce plays a character named Marcus. We still don’t know his last name, but he loves his mom, and he loves learning to make desserts in Copenhagen. The same people who supported Tyler in his "radical" era are taken aback now that he’s saying something. He doesn’t know what to think.
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He’s paranoid. Enter third track: “Noid.” He feels like a camera is suddenly a gun in his face, which he shows in the companion music video with fellow Bear cast member Ayo Edebiri frantically running up to the camera in the same nature. WILLOW, sister of Jaden and daughter of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, echoes the chorus behind him. In between him grieving the things he can’t do normally or in private, there is the Ngozi family saying in their native Zambian language:
“When you come at my house, please be respectful. Because I don’t like talking too much. Talking too much breeds gossip.”
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“Whatever you do, don’t ever tell no bitch you love her
If you don’t mean it, don’t tell us.”
Teezo Touchdown of Beaumont, Texas. He’s been creeping onto the scene with Drake, Don Toliver, Travis Scott, and preliminary Tyler projects, but people cannot help but listen on fourth track “Darling, I.” Touchdown possesses vocal gymnastics that have been likened to Rick James, and his background vocals now glide up front alongside the right hand of the Creator. Tyler knows he’s doing what he loves, but it can be a lonely, lonely, lonely thing.
“Nobody could fulfill me like this music shit does
So I’ll be lonely with these Grammys when it’s all said and done, c’mon.”
Teezo wants his friend to be happy, to just open his heart and let someone in. Tyler confesses the restrictions he may feel from monogamy, but not explicitly in a sexual nature. Bonita concludes:
“Transparency is key, be honest.”
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But what happens when you fall in love? You make mistakes. Fifth track “Hey Jane” flows through respective soliloquies of Tyler and a woman he may or may not have had an abortion with earlier in his life. There’s only so much a man can understand except the recklessness that resulted in the situation.
“Look, Jane, it’s your choice at the end of the day
Just know I support you either way, no pressure.”
The track ends with Jane:
“T, no matter the decision today, I just want us to be cool either way
No pressure.”
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<<<(Reddit @Luke_Brit)
Going through something like this can incredibly isolating, hence there being no features on the last track. He left the choice up to this woman, but he feels like he killed something within her spirit in track six's “I Killed You.” When times get hard, you need your friends, therein entering Donald Glover, aka fellow celebrated artist Childish Gambino. This track is also about not leaving yourself behind when things heady. Tyler is a Nigerian man, but his heritage is deduced to American stereotypes. He speaks to his roots, and specifically the women. Their celebrated traditions of beauty opens the song,
“Your new hot comb go ‘round and ‘round
Your new blowout go ‘round and ‘round.”
and it parts with an interlude encouraging the preservation of this beautiful culture.
"Talkin' bout my heritage
I could never kill you."
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(Looper)
It’s not his place to judge Jane for her decision, and this freedom is explored in track seven's “Judge Judy.” Gambino continues as the feature on the track. He created Hulu and FX’s Atlanta, a 4-season exploration in afro-surrealism that ended in 2021. The finale of the show involves the cult TV show Judge Judy that also ended its regular broadcast in ‘21, and now one should be curious and binge the whole show. Preferably Atlanta, then Judy. Tyler uses Judy as a woman who is sure of herself and doing her own thing by experiencing her sexual liberty, hence the song fading out with the sensual moans of a woman. Let's just say...
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The woman are coming. they're up front, and someone needs to get a mop. It’s getting “Sticky.” Less subtly in within track eight, a mop can be a weapon in a "sticky situation." Meanwhile, a lunchroom beat busts the bass with GloRilla of Memphis, Sexxy Red of St. Louis, and a legacy in the hip-hop field, Lil Wayne of New Orleans. The women are speaking up, but others think they’re "on one." People mock GloRilla’s Memphis accent, but she knows people understand. While this country won’t take care of our women, Sexxy Red continued her career through an entire pregnancy. Lil Wayne attempted suicide at the age of 12, and a cop saved him within an inch of his life. Three more women, revealed via social media being the echo of the album’s mania in addition to the rappers featured, they exclaim:
“Chromakopia!
Chromakopia!”
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Caesar and Tyler come down from this high, and T needs to talk to his peers in the industry. Track nine: it’s time to “Take Your Mask Off." All of the best actors were theatre kids. Self-proclaimed “thugs” in the height of their careers now have families and brand collections to supply themselves for years. He speaks on the traumas of being a woman in post-partum, but also the self-righteous nature that these peer/family dynamics lead themselves by:
“And I hope you find yourself
And I hope you take your mask off.”
(X @MOFFCTS) >>>
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“MOMMA TALK” is an underrated gem from Tyler’s last album “Call Me If You Get Lost.” It’s companion in Chromakopia may lie in track ten: “Tomorrow.” Bonita begs for a grandchild.
“We need a little Ty-Ty walkin’ around here, okay?”
Tyler has realized what his decisions have done to his mother, being an only child while dealing with his own self-discovery. He assures her not to worry:
“Cause time got nothing right.”
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Tyler's identity is his own, and they can’t say anything. If someone pushes you down, you get back up and prove what they just did wrong. Track eleven: “They Thought I Was Dead.”
“You don’t wanna go to war with a soldier,” Santigold cries.
Schoolboy Q acknowledges the obligatory appreciation for the hood, but also the upbringing of an urban suburb:
“Swear I burned twenty M’s 2018
Like I play for the Bills, goin’ OD.”
Tyler will not succumb to becoming obsolete now that he’s hit 30, but he could expose younger fans that find him offensive now. He shouts out the new generations with a 20-year-old prodigy on the rise:
“Bitch, you ain’t Coco Gauff, you can’t serve me.”
MO NOTE AND ONLY MO NOTE: this is my personal favorite.
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In track twelve, Bonita tells Tyler he looks just like his father in “Like Him.” It’s taken her a while to tell him this, but his dad wanted to be in his life. How can a child react to that?
“Mama, I’m chasing a ghost, I don’t know where he is.”
Baby Keem, rapper on his own upbringing, has his one adlib of the album: “Huh?”
Enter Lola Young, the next Amy Winehouse. Her haunting vocals are reminiscent of Billie Eilish, but they're uniquely her own. There are already TikTok edits of The Bear to this track, where the main character’s father is never shown, but his mother Donna, Jamie Lee Curtis, is another mirror for the main character Carmen. This one will hit the hardest, those mourning fathers they never knew, or wish they never did.
"How could I ever miss somethin' (Go)
That I'd never had?"
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(Complex Music on X)>>>
We need to be silly for a second to come off of that. How about track thirteen's “Balloon.” Tyler has had sexual orientation prejudices for his entire career, to which he continuously mocked in his music regardless:
“I don’t even like girls, bitch, I’m way up, too hot.”
Echoing is Luke and Rob Base, yelling “Don’t stop!” like a precaution to those in doubt of their own image. Tyler wants to air everything and everyone out. Then, there is Doechii, the Tampa-based celebrated rapper of “DENIAL IS A RIVER” about finding out that her boyfriend was gay. It’s okay to be gay, but it's also okay to just be open about it:
“Out in New York, walk around bare-toed.”
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We’re done. It’s the last track at fourteen, we are tired, but “I Hope You Find Your Way Home.” A heart-melting voicemail plays in the outro, comparable to a proud teacher singing a student’s praises to their parents:
“Real shit, I’m proud of you
I’m proud of you, bro.”
The only thing needed to end this symphonic phenomenon at this point in time, there's Bonita:
“Do your thing, just keep, keep shinin.’”
Chromakopia echoes, but it will linger. I hope it even haunts a little. Shoutout to Genius and deep lyricism and enthusiasm across all of the collaborators. This album came out at a very important time in my life, as I'm sure many others can relate. I see myself in Chromakopia, so that's why I wanted to call this Chro(mo)kopia.
Cheers...
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