TYLER, THE CREATOR FLEXES B-SIDES BETTER THAN MOST RAPPERS’ BEST MATERIAL ON ‘THE ESTATE SALE’

Tyler, The Creator’s sixth studio album, CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, was released in June 2021 and had a healthy mix of brash vanity and open vulnerability. CMIYGL was a passionate return to his gritty rapping beginnings, a break from the lighter, more R&B aesthetics of his previous two albums, IGOR and Flower Boy, and a reminder of his superior rapping ability.

He keeps challenging what it means to be a man in hip-hop throughout the album and shows off all the varied parts of who he is as a person and an artist, giving listeners a welcome mix of open vulnerability and creative flexing. He doesn’t rap about fancy clothing, but you will hear him brag about things like the view of the ocean from one of his homes and that he spends his money on art while telling other rappers to keep their Pateks.

Returning over two years after the original album’s release to deliver The Estate Sale, an expanded deluxe version of the album, he further develops its themes with unique tracks from CMIYGL’s recording sessions. The eight additional tracks mix in smoothly with the original tracklist. Before he could formally usher in a new artistic age, as noted on the lead single “DOGTOOTH,” he had some other things to say. He rhymes with purpose, “Not sure what you overheard, but it’s probably what I said, bitch / I’m out here livin’, y’all on the feed.”

Tyler displays the Clipse influence that he has been evoking throughout the rest of his career on “STUNTMAN” with Vince Staples. The song has Pusha T and No Malice trading lines on it that are packed with boastful flexes and comparisons to those below him, precisely emulating Pusha T and No Malice’s heyday. The believable love ballad “WHARF TALK,” which he co-wrote with his close buddy A$AP Rocky, is hauntingly evocative of his Flower Boy and IGOR eras due to his singing cadence and the catchy synths, but it also works well with some of the R&B-influenced songs on the original tracklist, such as “WUSYANAME.”

Tyler puts on one of his best rapping performances of his career on the Madlib-sampling track “WHAT A DAY,” which is the ultimate highlight of the deluxe pack. He delivers a bar cannon with charisma and a slick delivery that he has been meticulously honing up until this point. He spits, “So many white diamonds, yeah, I got jungle fever / But they didn’t raise me, so shout out to black women,” before becoming more outspoken, “I’m barely enjoying the sex, rarely replying to texts, and I got a pain in my chest, that’s from suppressin’ the stress.”

He gives a list of the things he’s never done, such as drive a Hellcat, flex a big Richard Millie watch, or post on TikTok, while shamelessly proclaiming himself to be one of the best rappers out there. On the second stanza, he raps, “White boy said I brag too much, the black kid said it’s inspiring,” acknowledging the disparity between his listeners and the people he writes his songs for.

In “HEAVEN TO ME,” Tyler admits that the lack of children or, at the very least, the current desire to be a father, allows him to live stress-free and exclusively for himself, pursuing his ambitions of designing clothing and driving classic vehicles. Tyler, The Creator puts everything on the table with a bold close on the closer “SORRY NOT SORRY,” which also has a music video where he kills off all of his previous eras. This leaves listeners wondering what will come next from Tyler, The Creator.

It becomes abundantly evident for the last time that Tyler, The Creator lives on his own terms as he experiments with the idea of either offering a sincere apology to those he feels he has wronged throughout his life or a sarcastic apology to those he feels have mistreated him.

As a major artist who has achieved both commercial and popular success and accolades from the underground Hip-Hop scene, Tyler occupies a special position. He satisfies both groups by continuing to be both a masculinity-challenging rapper and a popstar at the same time.

Tyler raps to his own beat, shattering conventions and his own self-inflicted pressure to establish himself as an exceptional rapper in the process. Tyler ignores the tendency in Hip Hop of releasing a deluxe that is practically a completely new project of its own under the limits of the streaming era.