Earlier than the Grammy Awards and inventive bungee-jumps, Tyler, The Creator was only a child dancing to Omarion’s ‘Contact’ at a faculty expertise present. Twenty years later, that very same wide-eyed pleasure – and crate-digger intuition – returns to energy his ninth album, ‘Don’t Faucet The Glass’.
The shock drop is a 10-track dance battle manifesto lathered in Jheri curl sheen and Zapp Band-style talkbox chatter (‘Sucka Free’). Opener ‘Massive Poe’ units the tone, embracing the raucous bounce of early-2000s N.E.R.D à la ‘In Search Of…’. Rhyming co-pilot Pharrell (who co-produced ‘Contact’) materialises like a Y2K phantom, throwing a number of animated verses over the Busta Rhymes-flipping beat.
Clocking in at a chiselled 28 minutes, ‘Don’t Faucet The Glass’ is primarily anchored by disco-flavoured raps and Kangol-clad ’80s hip-hop. ‘Cease Taking part in With Me’ digs up, dusts off and digitises some Whodini and Run DMC-style drums to nice impact. On ‘Don’t Faucet That Glass / Tweakin’’, private retorts reduce by way of lowrider-ready bass: “N**** stated I misplaced contact with the common of us, I ain’t by no means been common, you n**** is jokes.”
‘Ring Ring Ring’ and ‘Don’t You Fear Child’ are actual show-stealers. The previous brews a beat from tangled landlines, lyrical irreverence and thick funk bass, whereas the latter rewires the highlight for Brooklyn vocalist Madison McFerrin. It’s a young R&B jewel that tugs on the heartstrings and gestures towards Ok.P. & Envyi’s 1997 Miami Bass basic ‘Swing My Means’. The marginally undercooked nearer, ‘Inform Me What It Is’, awkwardly if earnestly nods again to 2017’s ‘Flower Boy’. Tyler’s weak, Kelis-referencing chorus – “Mama, I’m a millionaire, however I’m feelin’ like a bum” – lays naked a stressed (and repeated) seek for connection and which means.
Shedding the cinematic sprawl and narrative pathos of final 12 months’s ‘Chromakopia’, Tyler steps away from the character-driven framing of Wolf Haley or Sir Baudelaire. The paranoia and parasocial stress explored on that report nonetheless linger – however beneath cartoonish ’80s rap armour. It’s half Kurtis Blow and half LL Cool J, encased in a transparent Perspex chamber like a collector’s motion determine. As an alternative of inviting connection, Tyler shields himself behind the glass: a museum piece for dance and show solely.
Particulars
- Launch date: July 21, 2025
- File label: Columbia
