Igor
by Tyler, The Creator

From Skinny TOP 100 COMMENTER 05/30/2019 11:03 | #236910 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

This really captures the sonic, post-genre, Spotify-core zeitgeist of pop music in 2019. Is it competent? Obviously. Does it move people? Clearly. Does it move me? No. It's just there. Tasteful, inoffensive, "cool", from the fluid song structures, to the gently frayed synths, to the shade of pink used on the album cover. It's undoubtedly pretty, but also intangible and noncommittal. It's a clean, hoppy, mildly fruity, 4.5% IPA, effortlessly quaffable but very much reluctant to nail its flag to a mast that isn't wearing classic Vans or aggressively smart-casual New Balance. It's a sentient Fjällräven Kånken with an unhealthy (but very on trend) Neptunes obsession.

In Tyler's defense, we are living in a post-Odd Future world, and he was very obviously the mastermind behind that entire movement, responsible as much as anybody can be for what has emerged since. But where Odd Future once felt like the, erm, future, Igor feels decidedly like the present. That said, I think there's a lot of value in having era (or micro-era) defining records, and this could just be one of those. But it isn't going to define my 2019, because it's nothing.

From lleon79 TOP 100 COMMENTER 05/18/2019 17:02 | #236418 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Having only listened to “Flower Boy” from Tyler, I like “Igor” much much more. The atmosphere the album builds throughout its songs is very pleasing, and that's exactly what I loved about his past record. It's not 'agressive rap', which many times I don't quite like. It's more 'jazzy'; like something you can listen to driving in the night, or in a rainy day. My favorite ones in here include “EARFQUAKE”, “A BOY IS A GUN” and “GONE, GONE / THANK YOU”. Maybe I'll go visit his past catalogue.

8 years ago, if someone told me that Tyler would go on to make one of the great albums of this decade, I would’ve scoffed. Easily one of the top 5 albums of this decade and one that will have a marked influence going foward.

From DeusExMackia TOP 100 COMMENTER 06/16/2019 18:35 | #237646 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

"I don't wanna end this season on a bad episode". God dammit Tyler, you really know to f*cking hit people in the feels.

IGOR embodies the gothic connotations of its name. A sonic conceptualisation of what a bad break-up feels like; the anguish, the pandering over unhealthy infatuation and the constant mental buzzing of someone on yer mind all the time in that way. Just as Igor has been used in literature for the name of monsters, Tyler explores how much of a monster he became in the heartbreak that spurred this record on.

And what a f*cking record this is. Holy god. It's 40 minutes of non-stop, absolute magic.

IGOR is game-changing, it's a revelation, it's the future. Hip hop? Fuck off, nuh-uh, how about neo-Soul Hop, and every possible interpretation you can make from that phrase.

Earfquake breaks gravity every time it gets played, whilst A Boy Is A Gun is possibly the best song about being infatuated about someone I've ever heard. As for What's Good, jesus christ...when that "DRACULA DRACULA DRACULA" line comes in, polarities shift across the universe. IGOR is such a concentrated piece of musical energy that it seemingly encapsulates all the brightness of Tyler himself as well as all the wholesomeness of his sad-boi lyrics. Like I said, it is the future.

Gut punching melancholia, splayed out over such a textured, detailed canvas of sound that even knowing where to begin looking on this record is hard enough in itself. Tyler encouraged us to "articulate" our favourite "moments" on the record, and that truly feels like the only way to really convey how astonishing and wonderful and brilliant IGOR is. I wish I could write essays on some of the song switches, samples, instrumentation, heck even just on some individual seconds.

A triumph of modern music. There is no going back from here now, IGOR is a new benchmark musical innovation.

From YEEZY 05/17/2019 10:46 | #236342 | TOP COMMENT Vote up your preferred comments and the comments with the most votes will be flagged.

Listening to this for the first time, it sounds like something from the future. Tyler's Production is INSANE!