Tyler, The Creator: "I Hope You Answer"

 

Tyler, The Creator is a rapper with a devoted cult following. His third album, Wolf, was released in early 2013 and was well-received by critics. Although he has long been known for shocking lyrics, Tyler actually makes a departure from graphic songs and touches on more emotional topics in Wolf. He has been criticized in the past for using homophobic slurs and for making sexist comments, but fans know that it’s all an act intended to mess with society. As mentioned in a previous post, introspective rap is not new; it has been popularized in recent years. Two examples Tyler’s loneliness and the impact it had on his masculinity are the songs “Answer” and “Lone”.

While his previous songs had violent lyrics and even sounded vicious, they were probably just the reflection of a young man struggling to discover what being a man is, especially in the rough genre of hip hop. On “Answer”, Tyler speaks about wanting to talk to his father who left him when he was a kid. While it’s still angry, it also echoes with statements of aching sadness. Rolling Stone Magazine states that the song starts out slow but then gets progressively angrier. With “Answer”, Tyler provides the image of a man who struggled with not having the prototypical childhood that the family ideological state apparatus promotes. He grew up without a purely masculine influence, but says he didn’t need it.

“Lone” is about the pressure of being famous and alone as well as the death of his grandmother. With an album like Wolf, Tyler, The Creator manages to unveil the emotions that are present in hip hop, even if some “harder” rappers wish to keep it a “thug” genre. The sooner the masculine facade of violence and drug dealing dissolves from hip hop the sooner audiences will have more  rap that is poetic and resonant.