Tyler, the Creator - Call Me If You Get Lost

Advise your parents to stick their fingers in their ears, we're about to listen to two albums from discerning young gentlemen who say things of a perspicacious nature. I'm not sure which order we should hear them though. Old then new? New then old?

I'm thinking new then old, because that makes more sense. We'll listen to Tyler The Creator's Call Me If You Get Lost and then call Dr. Dre and the Death Row Inmates to come pick us up, lost or not.

Tyler the Creator crossed over into fame by eating a cockroach, puking, and hanging himself in the video for Yonkers, and maintained that high by just generally frightening the bejeebus out of any one who hears his music. Some people find things he says offensive, but i find people saying offensive things all the time. I like to pose the question "have you considered the possibility that it's supposed to be offensive?" I'm not saying that offense is good or bad, i'm just saying that the offensiveness of the thing is intentionslly meaningful. Supposedly Call Me If You Get Lost isn't quite as juvenile as his previous albums. I only know a handful of his songs and they are all over the map, so i expect this to be a Random Crap album.

I also know that he has a thing about golf. I don't know what that thing means per se, but even the sailboat and old fashioned luggage painting for the cover art has a bit of "golf" about it. Maybe it's the socks. Anywho, let's just listen to it, because damned if i know how this concept will play through [snap] i mean out. Goblin, Wolf, Flower Boy, Igor, most of his other albums make immediate sense in terms of what he actually does (which is basically Shock Rap), but this one is not so immediately comprehensible. Here we go.

Right off the bat i'm conflicted. The concept is that he has permission to travel freely, has an official license with photo and everything. This is going to be an adventure. Buuuuuut, not telling me track names or sub plots or anything at all about the contents of said adventure feels so incredibly irksome that i haven't even put the headphones on and i'm just watching side a of this impending double album spin in silence. It's not gonna be a quick afternoon jaunt and i don't have a map is what i'm saying. It is abso-goddamn-lutely ridiculous how much anxiety this plastic disc and its as yet unbirthed twin brother are producing inside me right now. Ok enough savoring, needle drop.

Not sure where we started, i assume California, but yeah we wandered all over the place and end up in Geneva, Switzerland for side 2. This is total ADD Trap/Neo Soul Hip-Hop weaved together with Reggae style toasting. Not sure if that's an homage or a parody of Kendrick Lamar, but as we approach the end of disc one it's totally obvious there's no way to break these sides down into namable segments. Yes there are track breaks and style changes and moments where we're inside different tracks, but it's clearly all just one long piece called Call Me If You Get Lost.

Oh, ok, the insert with the actual track names is in with the second record. Still, i don't think you could legitimately pinpoint track breaks without DJ Drama's shoutouts. It's constructed as a single continuous meander and it is fantastic in its execution.

Man, now i'm conflicted again. On one hand yeah this is a phenomenal album, but on the other hand this isn't an album at all. This is one continuous musical work that takes up all 4 sides of 2 records. Right? I mean take for example The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. Feels wrong to call that a Danny Elfman album, doesn't it? Nobody's out there calling The Wall a "double album," because it's not, The Wall is a Rock Opera. Well, then i hereby declare that Call Me If You Get Lost is a Hip-Hopera. Other Hip-Hoperas we've listened to include The Score and Deltron 3030 (Fugees and Deltron 3030, respectively). As contrast, 3rd Bass's Derilects of Dialect is not a Hip-hopera, just a Golden Age classic.

That begs the question, is Kid Cudi's Man on the Moon trilogy a Hip-Hopera of Wagnerian proportions? No. Those are just albums. I think the difference lies in structural direction. Do the tracks add up to an overarching concept, or is the concept broken up into identifiably discrete segments? Those of you who haven't read my quadrilogy of insanity where we find out that Thought takes place inside a Klein Bottle will no doubt be completely lost at this point, so maybe we stop, collect ourselves, and do a separate post about a classic Gangsta Rap solo album by Dr. Dre. See how bizarre that terminology is? Am i going to argue that The Chronic is another Hip-Hopera about a day in the life of some gangsters selling weed? Probably not, i haven't actually ever listened to it as an album, but i expect it's just a Golden Age (albeit Gangsta Rap) Hip-Hop album with clearly delineated songs and skits.

I need a night-nap and a tommorow beverage before we tackle that one though, this intricate taxonomy stuff gives me a migraine. But i can definitely recommend Tyler the Creator's Call Me If You Get Lost, it's not at all obnoxious or frightening like some of his earlier stuff; rough around the parental advisory edges, sure, but completely enjoyable for the bizarrely Reggae DJ themed adventure it now in hindsight explicitly purports to be.