IGOR‘s follow-up sounds like the result of Tyler saying, “You want rap music? I’ll give you rap music.” There will always be layers of musical complexity in every new Tyler release - he’s such a visionary producer and a voracious listener that his albums can’t help but capture his love for a vast spectrum of music. If Tyler is nominated again for his new Call Me If You Get Lost, this line of reasoning will not apply. When I hear that I’m like, ‘Why can’t we just be in pop?'”

“I don’t like that urban word - it’s just a politically correct way to say the N-word, to me. “It sucks that whenever we - and I mean guys that look like me - do anything that’s genre-bending or anything, they also put it in a rap or urban category,” Tyler told reporters at the ceremony. While expressing gratitude for recognition at such a high level, he also pushed back on the rap categorization, calling it a “backhanded compliment” rooted in racial stereotypes. Tyler would tell you as much, and on the night he won his Grammy for Best Rap Album, he did. If anything, the album was the sound of Tyler going pop and doing it in style. Often, as on the album’s transcendent single “EARFQUAKE,” he did so by bursting into song. The album was a tour de force, voyaging through synthetic funk and soul, brisk organic post-Daft Punk bombast, hard discordant trap beats, and so much more as Tyler unpacked his feelings for a man who became his lover only to go back to his ex-girlfriend. Not that it contained zero rapping whatsoever, but Tyler, The Creator’s 2019 stunner veered further than ever from the queasy, aggressive, jazz-tinged hip-hop he made his name on in Odd Future’s salad days. CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, though, is a chance to see if they can recognise rap greatness once it has kicked their door in.Don’t let the Grammys fool you: IGOR was not really a rap album. Giving the Grammy the benefit of the doubt, maybe they wanted to reward all the great rapping he’d done until that point. “WILSHIRE” is potentially best described as an epic poem. And then there’s “RUNITUP”, which features a crunk-style background chant, and “LEMONHEAD”, which has the energy of Trap or Die-era Jeezy. The vibes across the album are a disparate combination of sounds Tyler enjoys (and can make)-boom-bap revival (“CORSO”, “LUMBERJACK”), ’90s R&B (“WUSYANAME”), gentle soul samples as a backdrop for vivid lyricism in the Griselda mould (“SIR BAUDELAIRE”, “HOT WIND BLOWS”) and lovers rock (“I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE”).

Tyler made an aesthetic choice to frame CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST with interjections of shit-talking from DJ Drama, founder of one of 2000s rap’s most storied institutions, the Gangsta Grillz mixtape franchise. The focus here is very clearly hip-hop from the outset. Tyler superfans will remember that the MC was notoriously peeved at his categoric inclusion-and eventual victory-in the 2020 Grammys’ Best Rap Album category for his pop-oriented IGOR. But in this case, an exceptionally great one. But across CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST, the man once known as Wolf Haley is just a guy who likes to rock ice and collect stamps on his passport, who might whisper into your significant other’s ear while you’re in the restroom. The Los Angeles-hailing MC, and one-time nucleus of the culture-shifting Odd Future collective, made a name for himself as a preternaturally talented MC whose impeccable taste in streetwear and calls to “kill people, burn shit, fuck school” perfectly encapsulated the angst of his generation.

There’s a handful of eyebrow-raising verses across Tyler, The Creator’s CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST-particularly those from 42 Dugg, Lil Uzi Vert, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Pharrell and Lil Wayne-but none of the aforementioned are as surprising as the ones Tyler delivers himself.

Tyler call me if you get lost