Tyler, The Creator is an extremely popular rapper, songwriter, and producer,is latest album amassing over a billion streams.
Many people don’t know the origins of Tyler and mostly know him only for his newer music, like the albums Flower Boy, IGOR, and Chromakopia.
Tyler was in a music collective called Odd Future. The group consisted of Tyler, Casey Veggies, Hodgy, Left Brain, Matt Martians, Jasper Dolphin, Travis “Taco” Bennett, Syd, Brandun DeShay, Pyramid Vritra, Domo Genesis, Mike G, Earl Sweatshirt, L-Boy, Frank Ocean, and Na-Kel Smith.
Tyler released his first solo album, Bastard, on December 25, 2009. The album did well for Tyler, who was considered a small artist at the time. However, the album received major backlash for its themes. Even new fans are shocked when they hear some of the songs.
The album’s instrumentals and Tyler’s flow were great; however, his lyrics were what people were concerned with. Tyler frequently mentions extremely dark topics like kidnapping, rape, and cannibalism. In the song Sarah, he includes a woman yelling for help and crying. At some point, he tells her to “shut up.”
Many deemed this album as just shock value. Despite that, the album has ranked highly on a lot of lists.
After he released Bastard, Tyler signed with XL Recordings, a British independent label.
His next album, Goblin, performed extremely well, and its ratings were far higher than Bastard.Goblin was far less disturbing than Bastard; however, a lot of the same issues remained. The album had the same themes of rape, misogyny, stalking, necrophilia, and homophobia.
However, these topics weren’t as explicit as they were in Bastard, so Goblin did far better than his previous album despite controversies.
The UK had problems with Tyler’s lyrics. He was banned from the UK for three to five years for what he wrote, primarily in 2009. Due to him not being allowed to enter the UK, he had to cancel his planned performances there.
When Tyler talked about getting banned, he said, “I’m being treated like a terrorist.” Many people also believed the UK denying him entry was an act of racism.
In response, the Home Office in the UK released a statement saying, “Coming to the UK is a privilege, and we expect those who come here to respect our shared values.”
In defense, Tyler said he doesn’t actually believe in the values he sang about. He explained that he wrote those lyrics when he was very young, and one of his songs, Blow, is written from the perspective of Ted Bundy.
Before this, Tyler had released two extremely successful albums, one of them being Wolf, which was released in 2013.
Before the release of the album, Tyler said in an interview that he didn’t want to be a part of the horrorcore genre of music anymore, stating, “Talking about rape and cutting bodies up just doesn’t interest me anymore… what interests me is making weird hippie music for people to get high to.”
Wolf follows the story of a boy named Wolf, who is sent to Camp Flog Gnaw, a camp for troubled youth. When he arrives, another boy named Sam warns him to stay away from his girlfriend, Salem. However, when Sam is away, Wolf and Salem meet each other at a party and start a relationship. When Sam returns and finds out about their relationship, he becomes enraged and talks about his past, where he was bullied, killed his tormentors, and then murdered his abusive stepfather.
As a message, Sam kills Earl Sweatshirt (Tyler’s real-life friend). A fight breaks out between Wolf and Sam, but the winner is unknown. After that, Salem and Wolf reconcile. However, Sam is killed by Tyler in another album, but Wolf doesn’t know this. Wolf ends with him having a therapy session where he talks about his grandma’s death and his desire to kill Sam, completely unaware that Sam is already dead.
Wolf was recorded from 2011 to 2013 and was received with mostly positive reviews. Despite moving away from his controversial lyrics, it was about as well-received as Goblin. Wolf sold about 89,000 copies in its debut week.
In 2015, Tyler released his next album, Cherry Bomb. In Cherry Bomb, Tyler managed to feature major artists like Lil Wayne and Kanye West.
Unlike Wolf, Cherry Bomb doesn’t particularly follow a story. Tyler said, “For Cherry Bomb, I was purposely like, I don’t want to get personal at all. Like, I’m just going to make songs.”
While Cherry Bomb wasn’t badly received, it didn’t reach the level of success that Wolf did. Cherry Bomb sold about 58,000 copies in its debut week.
Tyler’s next album, Flower Boy, released in 2017, is widely believed to be one of his best albums musically and was extremely successful. Tyler wanted to make up for Cherry Bomb’s performance since he felt the response was poor.
In the album, Tyler sings about love, sexuality, friendship, and loneliness. His love is unrequited, and he navigates that feeling. Compared to all of Tyler’s other albums, this album’s theme was completely different and much more enjoyable.
Critics highly ranked Flower Boy, and overall, everybody enjoyed the album. In its debut week, the album sold 106,000 copies.
Two years later, Tyler hit the jackpot with his new album in 2019, IGOR. To market the album, Tyler released a single called EARFQUAKE, which reached number 14 on the US Billboard Hot 100 after its release.
In its first week of release, IGOR reached number one on the US Billboard 200 and sold 165,000 copies.
In 2020, IGOR won the Grammy for Best Rap Album and was even nominated for Album of the Year.
IGOR is similar to Wolf in that it follows a story. It tells a breakup story where Tyler has a crush on another man, but his crush has feelings for a woman. Throughout IGOR, Tyler’s emotions fluctuate between happiness and fury.
Each song in IGOR has over a hundred million streams. As of 2025, IGOR remains Tyler’s most successful album, even four years after its release. His release of IGOR significantly boosted his fanbase and made him extremely well-known.
After Tyler’s major success with IGOR, he released another album two years later called Call Me If You Get Lost. The album sold 169,000 copies in its debut week, surpassing IGOR’s debut sales.
Call Me If You Get Lost was certified gold and platinum by the RIAA and was the first album to ever hit number one on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart in three different years.
One song from the album, WusYaName, managed to reach the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100. Overall, the album was well received. Critics didn’t praise it as highly as IGOR, but they still gave it a good rating.
Similarly to Cherry Bomb, Call Me If You Get Lost doesn’t tell a narrative. Instead, the album explores themes of identity, fame, romance, and heartbreak.
Tyler’s most recent album, Chromakopia, surpassed it in fame despite being released on October 28, 2024.
Chromakopia was released and it became extremely popular extremely fast. Tyler released a single as a teaser called NOID in which Tyler sings about dealing with fame and the struggles that come with fame in which he becomes paranoid because of his fame.
After Chromakopia was released, Tyler instantly became the number one artist across almost all streaming platforms. The album was extremely well received and almost every single song was extremely popular. A song that a decent amount of people didn’t really enjoy at first called Sticky later grew on many people. Due to a decent amount of the album dealing with some serious topics and then Sticky comes in and is a more fun song.
Chromakopia is based on his mother’s perspective/narration of his life and often gives him guidance in songs. In the songs she says things like in NOID where she says “Don’t trust these people out here. Please, whatever you do keep to yourself. Keep your business to yourself. Don’t even trust these motherf*ckin’ accountants” and in Darling, I where she advises “Whatever you do, don’t ever tell no b*tch you love her. If you don’t mean it, don’t tell her”
Currently, Tyler is doing a non-stop tour for his album and singing some songs from his previous albums. The tour started on February 4th 2025 and it will conclude on September 21st, 2025. Tyler is doing a total of 98 shows.
In Ludlow High School, students were surveyed on what their favorite songs and albums were. Every album and song he’s ever created were an option, but only the top 3 albums were chosen and each song that was most popular from that album will be mentioned below as well.
Wolf placed 3rd with 11.8% of the votes. The favorite song that was the most popular from this album to students was IFHY.
In IFHY, Wolf expresses his hatred and love towards Salem. The refrain in the song being “I f*cking hate you, but I love you,” meaning Tyler doesn’t truly hate Salem. He hates the fact that she’s dating another man instead of him. His love for her has a constant reminder that she’s also in love with somebody else and not just him.
Chromakopia placed 2nd with 17.6% of the votes. The favorite song among students was NOID in this album.
As mentioned earlier, Tyler sings about the struggles with fame and that he can’t trust anybody due to his presence since seemingly to him there’s almost always someone out to get him. In the song he mentions “No cameras out please, I want to eat in peace” most likely referencing the paparazzi or even simply fans asking him for photos constantly. Before the release of NOID, Tyler had expressed his dislike for people constantly coming up to him in public when he’s just minding his own business.
In first place, IGOR won with 35.3% of the votes. The favorite song from IGOR was ARE WE STILL FRIENDS?
In ARE WE STILL FRIENDS? Tyler struggles with whether he and his ex-lover can still be friends. In the song, he struggles with the fact that he’ll have to let him go despite still wanting to stay with the man. ARE WE STILL FRIENDS? is the last song in IGOR, wrapping up the story he’s told in the album.
Overall, it seems that Tyler’s newest albums are the most popular with students at LHS and around the world alike. The change Tyler made from Wolf and after that seemed for the best not only for Tyler mentally, but for his career as well.