If you frequented hip-hop blogs in the early 2010s, you were probably introduced to Tyler, the Creator through the words “I’m a fucking walking paradox.”
The roach-gobbling that follows this line in the “Yonkers” music video is what won Tyler his first viral moment. But those opening words foreshadowed a splinter in Tyler’s artistry. The type of artist who made the provocative, anti-establishment albums Bastard and Goblin is paradoxical to who we met on the more universal and lovesick Flower Boy and Igor. Right in the middle of those two versions is Cherry Bomb: released on April 13, 2015, to a mostly divisive response, the album showcased a Tyler at war with himself—torn between his ambition for grand musical statements and his tendency to fall back on provocation.
The shift seen in Cherry Bomb explained
“Yonkers” brandished Tyler with the reputation of a shock value merchant, something he fully embraced as he threw out slurs and depictions of violence with abandon. Though sincerity would occasionally pop out of Tyler during that early phase of his career—on tracks like “Answer” and “Awkward” from 2013’s Wolf—he ran most of his music through a filter of irony and absurdity, subconsciously training people to not take him seriously.
Cherry Bomb, while hosting many examples of a less mature Tyler is also where that started to change. Firstly, Cherry Bomb marks the last album where Tyler uses the F-slur—a word he used a career-high 16 times on Wolf, but only a then, at the time, career-low seven times here. There’s also a noticeable absence of Odd Future members on the album, with Syd being the only one to appear. Importantly, his love for soul and jazz music came to the fore on Cherry Bomb, through the loose, vibey mood piece of “Find Your Wings” and the first of his collaborations with Soul legend Charlie Wilson on “Fucking Young.” That clash of personalities led to Cherry Bomb’s reputation of being a difficult, frenzied project and a career low for Tyler, even if the critics mostly deemed it good-not-great. Tyler shares the more bleak perception of Cherry Bomb’s release, telling Jerrod Carmichael in a 2018 interview, “Everyone hated it. Except for real music lovers who care about drums. Like, I opened a rap album with a rock song.”
That rock song was “Deathcamp” which, despite its heavy Rock influence and distorted, sometimes poorly mixed vocals, is still the kind of song you’d expect from Tyler at the time. It’s brash, loud and rule breaking as guitars blare over raps about the gap in talent and vision between him and the competition. By 2015, Tyler not only had four studio albums under his belt, but a comedy sketch show, a festival, multiple clothing lines and a dedicated fanbase hanging onto every last word. Tyler sold the idea of empowering the outsider, making those braggadocious raps hit different for his fans.
“Buffalo,” the next track on the album, is quintessential to this version of Tyler. His raps about his status as a role model and leader for a generation are pierced by fantasies of him bludgeoning critics with popsicles. Absurdity is used as a crutch to dampen the risk of being too vulnerable. Similar subject matter is explored on “Smuckers” as he addresses critics ranging from academic Boyce Watkins (who called Tyler’s Mountain Dew ad “The most racist commercial in history”) to the state of New Zealand, who barred him from entry in 2014, deeming Tyler and the Odd Future collective as a “potential threat to public order.” Much of what Tyler said and did during this era has not aged well, but there was a sense that mainstream hip-hop needed a non-conforming voice like his, someone making people question the line between creative expression and problematic rhetoric, and ask whose responsibility it is to protect impressionable youth who can’t tell the difference between them. As put by his manager Christian Clancy in 2015’s documentary depicting the making of Cherry Bomb, “If this dude pushes a dialogue that causes an important conversation then fuckin’ A.” Compared to “Buffalo,” “Smuckers” soars to angelic musical heights in both iterations of its instrumental, aided by strong appearances from Kanye West and Lil Wayne. “Smuckers” is a great example of Tyler transitioning from an artist who would grab his friends to feature on tracks and instead being more intentional about the atmosphere he can create.
Tyler, the Creator just wanted to “make songs”
Cherry Bomb is peppered with songs that give up on the intensity of Tyler’s lyrics and go all in on atmosphere. Tripping some listeners up, the songs on Cherry Bomb don’t take a cohesive shape but are straight expressions of the range of Tyler’s taste, something he references in the interview with Carmichael saying, “For Cherry Bomb, I purposely was like ‘I don’t wanna get personal at all, I’m just gonna make songs,’” and what Tyler considers “good” clearly has no particular genre. The Cherry Bomb documentary is more instructive, as Tyler outlines a desire to emulate Stevie Wonder and make music that’s just as enjoyable for a five year-old as it is for an 80 year-old. The album’s fifth track, “Find Your Wings,” is the outcome of this, a melodic dreamland of a song featuring angelic vocals from Syd and Kali Uchis, and showcasing Tyler very little. “Find Your Wings” is as delicate as Tyler’s music had been to this point, something fans would get used to due to songs like Flower Boy’s “See You Again” or CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST’s “Sweet.” The Cherry Bomb documentary has a wonderful moment where Tyler leads a string section for “Find Your Wings” and is in awe at what they’re able to produce. You almost see him decide on the direction of his future albums in real time.
Even more indicative of Tyler’s shifting tastes are “2Seater” and “Okaga, CA.” Both tracks are light and breezy but take on both subtle and major shifts as the songs progress, morphing into something even more grand than what was laid out at the beginning, just like many of the tracks on IGOR and his latest album, CHROMOKOPIA. “2Seater” perfectly evokes the feeling of flying through Californian roads with the windows down, as a buzzing synth hovers over glamorous keys. “Okaga, CA” is as vulnerable as Tyler gets on Cherry Bomb, a surrealist sonnet dedicated to fleeing to the moon with a lover that wouldn’t feel out of place on his latest projects.
These two versions of Tyler have their own merits, but there are times on Cherry Bomb where they actively get in each other’s way. The most egregious example of this is the aforementioned “Fucking Young,” one of the most gorgeous songs you’ll ever not want to listen to. As Tyler lays out the extremely questionable details of falling for a minor, he infuses every ounce of his musical genius into the instrumental. It’s easily the most beautiful thing on the entire album, dreamy guitar chords and a softly wailing synth topped off by godly vocals from Charlie Wilson. There is no greater instance of the bifurcation of Tyler’s artistic personality stepping on each other’s feet, the instrumental genius and the shock value provoker.
Cherry Bomb’s Cult Legacy
Despite its jarring shifts between genres and vocals often buried beneath the instrumentals (which works for the few but not the majority), Cherry Bomb still has a cult following by fans, with some even calling for Tyler to perform tracks from it on his latest tour. Tyler himself clearly still has affection for it too, recently dropping vinyl to celebrate its 10th anniversary. And, in a 2018 interview with Fantastic Man, Tyler deemed it his favorite of his albums, even in the wake of the acclaimed reinvention he displayed on Flower Boy. In 2023, he affirmed his fondness for it on the Rap Radar podcast, saying “I’ve always liked Cherry Bomb… Because I say that era of me as a person was gross and I had to change, they associate that I hate the Cherry Bomb album. I’ve never stated that.”
In the years after Cherry Bomb, Tyler talked often about that era, when he found himself desperate to change the way he was perceived. Two events made him reevaluate his approach, not just to his music, but to celebrity.
During an interview with Converse in 2022, Tyler explained how a fan clocking him as “the guy from Ridiculousness” and then later being given a shitty tour bus gave him pause for thought, “Those two moments changed the trajectory of everything for me because I liked making music so much and thought ‘oh I’m the music guy’ and nobody gave a fuck. It’s not that they didn’t like it, it’s not that they hated it, I didn’t care about that. It’s that when they saw me, they didn’t see that at all, and that fucked me up. So I was like ‘alright watch this’ and I wrote ‘See You Again.’”
This doesn’t demerit Tyler’s older music at all. It brought something distinct to Rap and added flavor while emboldening artists like Earl Sweatshirt and Frank Ocean who came up with him while insuring legends like Kanye who, in the documentary, tells Tyler that Yeezus wouldn’t exist without him.
The mere fact that Kanye appeared on the album hints at a shift in Tyler’s anti-establishment mentality towards wanting to be accepted and welcomed by it and even protecting it (like when he expressed frustration with fans who booed Drake at his Camp Flog Gnaw festival in 2019.)
Simultaneously, Tyler’s newfound vulnerability and sincerity has allowed songs like “Garden Shed” and “Noid” to exist, as well as straight up love songs like “Earfquake.” Cherry Bomb is a musical translation of Tyler’s growing pains as he shed the skin of an entertainer who happened to make music and truly embraced his identity as an artist.
Klook.com
