Dissecting IGOR with Anthony Fantano

From Spotify Studios, this is Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. I'm your host, Cole Kisha. Hey everyone, as you know, Tyler the Creator released his new project, Egor, last week, and I thought it'd be appropriate to give some opening remarks on the album. And while I'll likely publish a traditional dissection of Egor as an epilogue to our flowerboy season, today I'll be talking with two guests about the project.

On the second half of this episode, I'll be speaking to Chris Lambert, co-host of the podcast Watching the Throne. Together we'll walk through the narrative of Egor song by song to get a sense of the overall story being told on the album. But before we do that, I'll be speaking to my first guest, the Internet's busiest music nerd, Mr. Anthony Fantano.

Anthony built a reputation for music criticism through his album reviews on his now massive YouTube channel, The Needle Drop. He since become one of the most respected voices in music criticism, and I thought he'd be the perfect person to discuss Tyler's new project with. Together, Anthony and I talk about Tyler's legacy, where Egor fits into that legacy, and some overall impressions of the album's sounds, themes, and influences. And so without further ado, please welcome my first guest, Anthony Fantano.

Alright, man, I'm here with Anthony Fantano, YouTube legend. How you doing, man? I'm doing good. How are you?

I'm doing great. Thanks for joining me. I'm going to talk to you today about Egor, of course, Tyler, the creators new album. I guess the interesting thing about you and what you do is I consider you kind of like a modern historian of contemporary albums.

You've reviewed Tyler ever since his first album, Bastard. And I feel like you kind of rose at the same time as Odd Future Rose during that kind of that same era. And I always kind of saw a similarity actually between what you did and what they were doing, just kind of utilizing new mediums and platforms and being innovative with technology, etc. So I just thought you would be the perfect person to talk to you about this album.

And in the research I was doing in preparation, and I was watching your old reviews, and I think something that you said really crystallized, at least how I felt about Tyler early on. And it was in your Cherry Bomb review, but you said Tyler simultaneously disappoints and impresses. And I thought that was a really great way to kind of encapsulate his early music. So I guess my first question for you is, is talk, if you could talk a little bit about Tyler's early work and you're kind of just your general feeling about it and maybe speak to that point of disappointing, but also impressing.

Yeah, to kind of tease out that point, you know, Odd Future, I've always been a little torn on because the ethos and the attitude and in a lot of ways hip hop of this decade, even though I don't think Tyler and Odd Future are the most influential force in hip hop of this generation, you can certainly put a pin in the decade timeline of a pre and post Odd Future era, you know, and again, sort of tease out that that simultaneous point, you know, it's the attitude, it's the ethos of Odd Future that is amazing, that sort of defines the group and makes them truly special because hip hop, if anything, comes down to attitude. But the execution is always what's kind of been a total mess to me. Like as far as like the production quality of the music, the lyricism, the quality of the rapping as well, Odd Future has always been punching under their weight when they were sort of functioning primarily as a collective. Years after the fact, as key members have continued to put out music and have matured artistically, talking about Earl, Sid, Tyler, Frank, etc., you've seen those people kind of come out ahead of the pack and their music has improved, the execution has improved.

And as that's happened, you know, even though Tyler's music and Earl's music and so on and so forth is not as edgy as it used to be, the ethos is still there in a lot of respects. These guys are still outsiders. They're still going against the grain. If they're any closer to the norm than they were when they came onto the scene, it's because the norm has melded to them.

It's not because they have sort of made any grand compromises of their artistic visions. So so while it's sad and I guess it sucks that Odd Future out of the box didn't come as well oiled as let's say Brock Hampton, we wouldn't have Brock Hampton without Odd Future. You know what I mean? So I think that's kind of what that idea of Tyler and maybe Odd Future at large, simultaneously being impressive and being disappointing because the music in my opinion is just not as great as it could be, even if I think what the group and what the key artists in the group mean to greater hip hop and greater music culture is mega important and significant.

Not only in terms of how artists of this current breed express themselves in this generation, but how their style, their fashion sense, how they handle themselves, how they function in the public eye. I think in a lot of ways Tyler and Odd Future totally redefined that and broke down a lot of boundaries and sort of took a lot of hip-hop unnecessary stoicism away from it and have brought in an era of artists that are a bit more volatile and expressive and off the wall and sort of marched to the beat of their own drum. Yeah, I think that was for me the biggest takeaway from Odd Future and Tyler being kind of the ringleader of that was Odd Future to me was an approach. It was an approach to music.

It was an approach to life. And I think that is the legacy of them. Obviously, like you said, lives on through the artists, but also in people like Rock Hampton paving the way for those guys and just really inclusive despite their kind of rebellious nature. It was really, I think I said in one of my episodes, the only barrier of entry is that you had to be yourself and that was the only rule.

Sure. Whatever that may be. And so that's kind of interesting transition because when we do talk about Odd Future and Tyler's early work, I do feel like we talk equally or more about just this, the approach, what they meant, but not so much about the music for various reasons. But I thought that is interesting given that Tyler's persona from day one was always the reputation of antics and rebellious, controversial.

And that's kind of stayed with him. I mean, even to this day, I feel like that's always the preface statement of any article you read about Tyler is, you almost feel like you have to acknowledge that side of it, although I do think that is fading. But maybe you can speak a little bit about that. And when I think about Tyler and Odd Future, they were so young and that to me is so important to remember that these guys were, you know, Earl was what, 15, Tyler was 18, 19, and they were just canned at the spotlight.

And like any group of rowdy boys would do, you know, they had fun with it, but also it ended up kind of, I would say just, I don't know if it diminishing their later work, but it was just kind of a stain that just seems to now be kind of fading away. But maybe talk a little bit about that and your interpretation of that. Yeah. I mean, if we learned anything in the advent of social media, it's that it's the kids love attention and Odd Future got a lot of it really early on and not even the same kind of attention that I think a lot of artists get as you may remember.

I mean, not that Tyler wasn't being actually edgy and offensive during this point in the group's existence. He certainly was, but for a moment it seemed like he couldn't really wipe his ass without being like an article about it. Yeah. You know, it was kind of obnoxious, but simultaneously it's like these websites were getting tons of hits like off every one of these articles.

So, you know, it only made sense they covered this stuff in the way that they did. Yeah. And Tyler, I don't know if it was, you know, just him being his authentic self and not worrying about what the rest of the world thought or ingeniously understanding that this drama would just help to benefit himself and Odd Future at the time. But he was very much just like soaking the flames, you know, and when you give someone that young and yeah, he wasn't like literally a baby, you know, a legal adult, sure, but still when you give someone that young, that much influence and that much sway over the music media to the point where every single thing that comes out of your mouth is a topic of discussion, like of course, like he's going to play with that.

Of course, he's going to use that to his advantage. Of course, he's going to be the word I'm looking for is provocative just because he can get a rise out of this class of people that can't seem to stop writing about him. It's actually kind of funny. Yeah.

And it's for me, the interesting part is being able to watch his evolution because, you know, there seems to be only a limited number of circumstances that happens with people like this. They either fizzle out oftentimes in, I guess, ugly ways, drug addictions or not taking their downfall with grace, you know, or we see like what Tyler has done, which I really respect and I find kind of beautiful is that he has matured as a person and that has been reflected in his music. And I feel like although he's been chasing the same sound for, I actually think since bastard, we're really starting to see the fruits of that labor. And he's always, it seems to me, and especially recently, just very much focused on art and expression.

And obviously hasn't been controversial in a number of years that I can recall. Yeah. And the first thing about him lately was when there was all that theorizing over his sexuality when Flower Boy was about to come out, which I mean, wasn't really him trying to be provocative on his part in my view, you know, at least not in the same way that we've known to be in the past. Yeah.

That was interesting. That was really interesting because I believe that to be a very, very genuine expression and probably something that was very difficult for him to do and him being so aware knew what kind of reaction it was going to get. And the interesting part was that a lot of people just thought he was trolling, which kind of goes back to what we're talking about with his early persona and that kind of still living by him even as he's maturing and him trying to, I would think, trying to get over that reputation. I just thought that was an interesting kind of dynamic between him doing something that I thought was probably pretty hard.

And then the public because of his past kind of questioning it. I thought myself as well that the accusation of him trolling around that time was kind of odd as well because I mean, while I guess Tyler is definitely a provocateur and somebody who seeks to get a rise out of people, at least that's sort of how we came to know him when he first came onto the scene. When I say somebody's trolling, there's usually kind of like a note of inauthenticity to that. Like you were saying something that you don't really mean or you don't really feel.

And I didn't really read Tyler's early antics as being inauthentic. Sure, they were offensive. Sure, they were over the top. Sure, they were insensitive.

But I think you're kind of stretching it a bit too far to say that he was literally trolling around that time and that he wasn't sort of being himself and that he wouldn't continue to just be himself and express himself genuinely as he sort of transitioned into the flower boy era of his career. Sure, no, that's fair. And I guess I meant the public view to Metatrol. No, I wasn't insinuating that you felt that way.

I think it's worth reiterating because I do think this view of him being a troll and being inauthentic is something that haunts him a little bit and I'm not exactly sure why. Just because you're being provocative and just because you're being offensive and just because you're doing something to get a rise out of the audience doesn't mean that you're doing it from a place that lacks truth. Sure. No, that's a great point.

That's a great way to transition into Igor. We'll talk a little bit about flower boy. I kind of want to come back to flower boy after talking to Igor or about Igor because I think it's interesting to view flower boy now having heard Igor. But I want to jump into Igor.

I was curious about your expectations leading up to Igor and if you had any and actually curious about your general thoughts on audience expectations of artists in general. Do you typically expect something from an artist or what's your take on that? I'll say specifically in the case of Tyler, I was hoping for him to come through with a project that brought his music and brought his expressions back to a darker place. And I think Igor definitely did that.

I didn't know exactly what shape that was going to take and it seemed like he might have been forecasting that with the album art. But generally I was just kind of hoping for his music to go back to a dark place because there is something still to this day that I think is pretty good about bastard and you were talking about artists that you sort of see being cut of Tyler's cloth that due to being provocative, maybe they end up fizzling out or something. But even in odd future and even in Tyler's worst moments, it was still resonating with the young audience that didn't really seem to care whether or not it was like, I guess, well put together. And on top of it, there was still always something to it.

It was something to it that you hoped would eventually develop into a record that was more well put together. That was always my feeling about Tyler was there were moments of brilliance that just never coalesced into something cohesive until Flower Boy I thought. I guess my assumption that was he was going to return to Cherry Bomb in a approach, I guess, in terms of I just didn't think he was going to make another Flower Boy. I just couldn't see that.

So yeah, let's just jump into it to Igor. I just watched your review last night that you put up. It seems like I won't spoil anything, but you generally were impressed with the album, I felt. I'm curious.

I guess I'm always interested in people's first impressions of an album, especially an album like this that is so sonically diverse and really unlike anything I've heard, there's definitely influences. But I think that as a whole it's pretty new. So let's start with your first impressions on first listen. What were your thoughts?

First impressions of the album when I began listening to the record for my review is yeah, they were just positive. There wasn't really this weird limbo period for me where I was having to adjust or reframe how I thought of what Tyler was doing here based on what I had known him to do before. I mean, a lot of the influences that clearly inspired this album as immersive and as very much Tyler this album is, where exactly he's pulling from is just so obvious. And I guess it was easy to make those connections from the off the bat because of listening quite a bit to a lot of what inspired this album.

So upon first listen, even though it is a new record and I love it and I do think it is a unique album, it did feel very familiar to me already. It did feel very madly but it did feel very Pharrell and it did feel very Kanye and numerous points on the album. And punk as well is a huge inspiration to a lot of what Tyler does and sort of a punk aesthetic, a punk ethos as well as like just straight soul music where huge inspirations to this album. So I felt like everything that helped make this record possible I was already vastly familiar with and as a result I think it was just easy to take to what he was doing.

And honestly, throughout Tyler's career as much as I love Flower Boy, all I've ever really wanted from him is to change. So there wasn't really any point during my listen here that I was like, oh, I wish he was doing something I'm used to him doing, what I mean. So first listen was Megan impressed with the aesthetic, the production, his goofy weird singing, the performances, the storyline was eluding me a little bit of what little storyline there is because the progression is a little choppy of the narrative of the relationship and track to track but that sort of became easier to orient in my mind upon maybe the third or fourth listen to the album. But yeah, I mean, generally first listen was me feeling pretty impressed and not only with all those things that I just mentioned but also just the flow and the track list too, there's not really a major dud on the album of any shape or form and which is not the case for everything Tyler's done up until this point.

Even Flower Boy has a few kind of snoozers on it but this album is like watertight in terms of every track here, the transitions between tracks and how all of it flows, how all of it progresses, it's again, it's watertight. Yeah, I had a similar impression on first listen. I guess I'm curious what things came into focus as you listen more, what things really started to bubble up to the surface as you're five, six, seven listens in. Again, just the weird production choices that he made throughout the album and sort of how he reused certain sounds and singing styles across particular tracks that very heavy distorted bass tone that pops up on key moments on the record is used pretty prominently throughout the album.

I was in love with the production upon first listen but as I heard it more and more and more and in a way this did end up working against the album slightly. It became apparent just how focused the production on the album is from track to track. I think sonically there's a little bit more variety on a lot of Tyler's previous records but consciously he was very much shooting for a lot of the same sounds and mixes to I think in a sonic way keep the album feeling as thematic as possible. Again, lead to it feeling I think a tad one-dimensional by the end of the record but still I think it adds so much to the story.

That can be a bit of a blessing and a curse for listeners who are maybe a little casual because the thing is if you listen to a song like are we still friends totally out of context, you probably don't get the story, you don't get the point and you may even think that just production wise the track sounds like crap and it's one of Tyler's worst sounding songs. But once you've heard that track after the context of sort of the production aesthetics of every song before it and the story of every song before it becomes an immensely powerful moment. Yeah, agreed. There's a few songs you can pull out of context but overall this is an album you start with song one and you play all the way to song 14.

Sure. Interesting that you notice that the reoccurring bass, that was one of the things upon further listening I think was a very deliberate choice in an attempt to make what could have been very disparate songs or songs that didn't quite fit together and it was pretty obvious to me that the album starts with a 15 second one note of that bass, distorted bass and it's in, I went back and listened it's literally in every single song and it's even in songs that you wouldn't think would make sense to be in where for the majority of the production is lush or it's singing or it's soft and then there's this distorted bass for whatever reason there. Yeah, that same tone is really like the anchor of so many tracks. Yeah, I almost, I haven't wrapped my head around too much of the narrative in terms of like long-term thinking about it but it's almost like he named Igor's theme.

Igor's theme is maybe is perhaps that bass is kind of that character. So that kind of gets me to what I wanted to talk about a little bit is Tyler as curator and as a master producer, a la Kanye West, a la Pharrell, these people that he I feel like has tried to model his career after and I think this was another step in that direction. For instance, he doesn't really even come on the album until the second half of Earthquake, the second song and really doesn't enter the album in a major way until the third song which was very kind of Kanye-esque I thought with Kanye's later work. I guess I would love to get your thoughts on him striving to be kind of a master producer and really I feel like he's trying to make the best choice for the song and removing himself from having to be the spotlight in terms of his voice throughout which again I feel like is in a vein of a Kanye.

So maybe talk a little bit about just that as a concept and him kind of striving towards that. Yeah, I mean as you mentioned, Kanye definitely set the stage for that rapper-curator archetype and that's very much in right now. If you're talking about still Kanye, you could be talking about Asap Rocky, you could be talking about also Travis Scott and of course now with this new record, Tyler the creator. The thing is Tyler in comparison with a lot of those people is still much more hands-on these days, even more than Kanye, because Tyler is in there still producing every beat, writing every song and even if he's not front and center all the time throughout this entire record because there are a lot of collaborators, he doesn't exactly throw a feature list out here in the track list and on top of it.

Many of the features, especially like Jack White for example, aren't placed on the album in the most obvious way. I think it's pretty clear that if I'm correct here, it's his guitar that turns up on, are we still friends? I could totally be wrong about that. Yeah, I'm not sure at this point where he is.

I heard he was on there but I haven't figured it out. Exactly. I heard he's on there, haven't figured it out, I would guess that it's probably there, but the thing is I don't know and I think that's intentional on Tyler's part because he doesn't want this to be like this multi-person play or anything like that. Focus on the character, focus on the narrative, focus on the aesthetic of the production and all that stuff.

I'm writing it, I'm directing it, I'm starring in it. It's very much like a Tommy was so affair, but it turns out good although you could say romantically in a lot of ways this album is just as tragic as the room. But, and attain some amateurish vibes as well, but still, not to go too far down that road of comparison because obviously we're going to hit it down because it's ridiculous but still. But still, Tyler as a curator I think is great and yeah, as I'm looking it up now, it would seem that I think the guitar solo on the final track is actually Jack White.

Yeah, it's interesting. The use of features I think is for the him for the first time, I feel like he's really done this where it's definitely not a feature for features sake, which is a very prominent trend in hip hop culture right now where you. Yeah, the closest example to that you could say is probably Cardi. The rest of the features on the album are really like playing a supremely supportive role and nobody really takes the spotlight away from Tyler for too long.

They're interjecting quickly or they're doing backup vocals or they're doing something supplemental with the instrumental, nothing in terms of anybody entering and really kind of dominating the focus of the album. And I think again, that's kind of a conscious decision because this is a story. Igor is a character and I think if you were to do too much of that outside of the Cardi appearance on the album, you'd have to start asking questions of like, okay, so this person appears in a frame in this musical equivalent to a film, who is this person? Why are they entering?

Yeah, what are they saying? What are they bringing to the story? Yeah, it starts to poke holes in the album's narrative and I definitely agree that that was a conscious decision. It's almost like he was using features as different colors in his palette and he was just very careful about how he interjected those features and again, to your point, not taking away from him but even more so, probably just the album atmosphere itself.

A lot of times, Tyler's not even the spotlight himself. So yeah, I guess that's a good transition into the theme of the album, the narrative of the album, this character Igor. You talked a lot about this on your review but I do want to speak to it a little bit here if you don't mind. I guess we can start with who is Igor?

What was your perception of this character in general and his story arc throughout the album? I think it's simple as Igor is Tyler and Tyler's Igor and Igor is really just kind of a mask for Tyler to put on so that he can express this story that it could be a bunch of different reasons that he would put that mask on. Instead of just saying, hey, I'm Tyler, I was in a bad relationship and here's my album about it. It could be because the reality of what might have happened, if this is a true story, if this is him pulling from real life, the reality of it might be too embarrassing or weird for him to want to just come right out and be like, okay, well, I'm not going to do this in character.

I'm just going to wind about my relationship that folded due to some kind of love triangle situation. It could be that he puts on the mask to essentially pull together an amalgamation of different experiences, maybe from different relationships and exaggerate on maybe some of the bad things that happen as a result of that and come through with an entirely refreshing story, a breakup album, a breakup story that is sort of of his own invention, but still based in part on personal experience. Coming out as Tyler and telling the story that isn't 100% true and didn't 100% happen in the fashion that you're describing it to happen on the album, there are a lot of weird expectations when it comes to the audience on that front with artists singing about their experiences and how they deliver them and there is sort of a weird assumption sometimes that everything coming out of an artist's mouth is what exactly they think and feel and everything they've done. I think he definitely created this character much like other great artists have in the past when they're trying to communicate something that maybe they don't feel comfortable doing so as themselves, David Bowie or Kevin Barnes from Montreal, so on and so forth.

He came through with this character to just use it as a vehicle, I guess, to tell this story, whether it's him keeping it 100 or him keeping it 50, whatever, the end of the day, it's entertainment and it's a compelling story with great performances and lyrics and musical themes and so on and so forth. But still, as the narrator and as the artist, you don't want the audience coming away from the album with a puzzled look because they didn't exactly know how to categorize the meaning and the personal significance of the story to the artist. You'd much rather they just sink themselves into the theme and the story itself and not concern themselves with how much of it is true, how much of it happened to you, did it happen exactly this way? Honestly, most relationships and this is even true for celebrities are just boring as fuck, even if they do end up dissolving.

So if you are to tell a story about that sort of thing, sometimes you do need to exaggerate on the truth a little bit in order to keep it interesting. I mean, in a lot of ways, that's what Kanye's My Beautiful Darkness and Fantasy is all about, the whole narrative about the domestic abuse and the meeting at the storefront to see your kid and the possible divorce and so on and so forth. Obviously, he's throwing all that tabloid shit in just for dramatic effect, even though it wasn't literally happening to him. You know, Igor could very much be the same thing.

Yeah, I agree. And I think as a foreign artist, it's probably easier to conceptualize your own story if you remove yourself from it and create a character based on but not strictly adhere to your own story. Sure. And then, yeah, just like you said, you know, you're allowed to then take liberties with that story and make it a little bit more compelling for an audience rather than just trying to be as true to your experience as possible.

Take liberties or even say what you actually think about it. Sure. Sometimes people under their own name and with the audience fully understanding that that's you saying that, you know, there's some things that you might not want attributed to your name in a way, you know what I mean? Which is actually, I think now that I ponder it for a bit, kind of an attitude change for Tyler, you know, if that's sort of where this character is coming from, you know?

Yeah, it's definitely like an alter ego that I think it comes out as an ego most of the time, you know, where he's the most direct about being Igor's on the song What's Good and that's the song that is all kind of Braggadoshi and comparing himself to God. And it's interesting where that song comes to the narrative. Right after he's able to accept that things are over and it kind of leads you into the back half of the album where it goes through letting go and forgiveness and these things. So maybe Igor is the kind of superhero in him that allows him to get over what it was, a tumultuous relationship.

And the meaning behind Igor, at least my kind of one-week analysis of it is Igor was the sidekick, was the sidekick to Frankenstein and is this archetype of being this kind of weird grotesque sidekick. And Tyler, you know, the relationship that he was in, it seems very clear that the guy that he was interested in also had a girlfriend. And so he maybe felt like this grotesque sidekick to this guy who could never quite commit to him. So that was kind of my understanding of why he would even be named Igor.

Yeah. And I think it's also worth mentioning that what I was going to say is that being in character and song is also nothing new for Tyler to, you know, going back to Goblin and going back to Wolf, you know, him being in character in A character in song is obviously something he's comfortable with at this point, but just now with Igor, he's doing it large scale. Yeah, that's been the interesting thing about his progression as someone who composes narratives throughout the entire album. Some interest in this pretty much from day one, he's always had some kind of narrative thread, whether it be the Dr.

TC from his early albums, the Shrink that he talks to on Wolf, there's the kind of kids camp element to it. And there's different characters that he plays throughout that. Obviously with Flower Boy, that was, you know, a very cohesive concept album from start to end. And you're seeing that again with Igor where it's, I think even more cohesive than Flower Boy was.

And the great thing about him refining this concept is that one, he's getting better at every album. And two, I think concept albums can take two approaches. One, more like a tip-and-bump butterfly version where it's very much an obviously constructed concept album, almost to the point where I wouldn't say it's hard to listen to, but it's definitely a different experience because there's those long gaps for poetry. And then at the end, there's a very long skit with you talking to Tupac.

So it's very much a different experience, whereas something like Igor and even Flower Boy, it's a little bit more concise and a little bit more, you know, just beneath the surface, which makes it for easy listening. But also if you're the type of mind that wants to dig in, there's plenty for you to dig into. No, I agree. It's great when an artist can pull together a great concept on an album and execute it in such a tight fashion because with concept albums, there's always the stereotype that it's really long.

It's just too much for, you know, a casual listen and so forth. But Igor, you know, it's a nice 40 minutes. It's a nice 40 minutes. And honestly, given the incredible narrow focus of the production, the album's theme, and so on and so forth, I wouldn't want it to be any longer than what it currently is, really.

Yeah, I agree. And I felt the same way with Flower Boy, too. I feel like he's really hitting a nice sweet spot and finding, you know, what fits for the sound and what fits for the narrative and just, you know, cutting the fat, which is definitely appreciated in kind of contemporary times where there just seems to be a lot of fat and there's not so much emphasis on album. It's just kind of, you know, bombardment of singles.

But yeah, so just a few more questions for you. I guess I'm interested to know you're pretty in tune with, you know, what people are saying online and I wanted to see what you thought of the general reception of Igor. I was, and still am trying to figure out, everyone I talk to loves this album, including people that I've not liked Tyler before, including my sister who, you know, pretty much listens to like, Pot Punk and hasn't really listened to Tyler. There's a few people I work with that never liked Tyler and then they're really liking this album, which was really strange to me because I thought it was a challenge, it would be a challenging album for people that weren't familiar with Tyler.

But the general impression seems to be very positive. The only criticism that I've seen is the lack of rapping has been kind of, I've seen a lot in just a lack of Tyler in general on the album and maybe a singing to some extent too, since he wasn't quite singing on pitch all the time. But I guess I'm curious to your thoughts about just the general reception of the album that you've seen and also were you surprised that it seems to be getting mostly positive reviews? Yeah, I mean, I wasn't, and I try not to, especially when it comes to a record that is this high pressure when it comes to putting a review out.

I try not to read too much into the things people are saying about the album prior to me getting my thoughts out. Yeah, that's smart. I did see, you know, a lot of people hyping the record up saying it's the best thing he's ever done, but I can't really say that put too much pressure on me by itself because that's literally what his fans have said to me every single time he chose it. And that's been before this record, and that has been before I gave Cherry Bomb like a three.

So it's like, you know, it's at the end of the day, I'm sort of unfazed by the wave of demands and vitriol that are thrown my way, that are thrown my way whenever a review for Tyler the Creator is either around the corner for me or has just dropped. So there was that, but I did find it interesting that there was a pretty vocal minority of people that were like not so much predicting that I was going to give it a six or a seven or maybe even lower, not because my previous reviews on Tyler, but because they actually thought it was kind of bad. I think they disliked the change of pace. I think they disliked the lack of rapping.

I think they disliked the lack of edge on a lot of the tracks, which I think is why, you know, you do have this phenomenon where you have people who are in your friend group that never heard Tyler before and didn't like him previously and can take to this album because in a lot of ways it's not a Tyler album. It's Igor. You know, I say Tyler is Igor and Igor is Tyler, but he hasn't embodied another thing on this record. And I think that's what's attracting new people and simultaneously turning off longtime fans, not in a way where it's like, oh, he's sold out or he's given up, you know, what I like about him and so on and so forth.

But it is a massive change for people who are maybe more used to him doing one thing and might have enjoyed the edgier leg of his career and look back on those albums like Goblin and Cherry Bomb really fondly. I personally don't. So I mean, this album resonated with me pretty hard. I mean, I guess that also applies to me too, you know, because while I do like bastard, the only other Tyler record that I have enjoyed up until this point is Flower Boy, you know, Wolf a little bit to a degree, but for the most part, I've just found his body of work to be chock full of potential that's not really capitalized on.

You know, Igor definitely does that. Igor capitalizes on it and so successfully. And you know, as far as I can tell about the reception beyond that, people generally seem to love the album. You know, it's still that vocal minority is there, but generally the vibes toward the record seem really positive.

Yeah, that's definitely the perception I have to and I agree with you. I'm in the same boat as Tyler's older discography is not something that I return to a lot. There are songs that I'll sometimes listen to, but it wasn't until Flower Boy that I was able to listen to an album front to back, you know, pretty consistently and regularly. And again, I think about his age all the time and I think about, you know, the age that he was making those older albums.

And again, I just think his trajectory is really beautiful and he's only what 28 now and, you know, to see what he's doing now is Igor and Flower Boy, you know, at this age is which is still I feel very young for a musician. I'm really excited to see what he has in store next. So I think that's a great point to stop. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about that we didn't talk about?

You know, if I had two more weeks to review the album and really I didn't because the fans would have probably found out where I lived in Germany if I made them wait any longer. If I had two more weeks to listen to and write the review, I most likely would have maybe dove into a bit more about every specific sound and instrumental choice on a lot of different songs. And I think I would have gone a little bit deeper into some of the bisexual themes on the record as well, which they're there and they're not. You know, I think Tyler is still keeping his sexuality pretty close to his chest at this point.

And he doesn't really flaunt it that boldly on this record. You know, by comparison, certainly he doesn't make you confront it in the way that Kevin Abstract does, like an American boyfriend. You know what I mean? It's not quite as in your face.

I think that he wanted that to be something that was a little bit more on the back burner and something that fans were paying closer attention to the record would realize once they listen to it more and more and they read into the lyrics. I think I think that was definitely intentional on his part and those who are listening to it a bit more casually can easily apply the story of the album to their own negative experiences when it comes to romance and that sort of thing. Again, I think totally intentional on his part to make the album appeal a bit more widely. And I think I would have talked about that.

Again, I think it would have talked about the instrumentals and I probably would have gone into a longer summation as well if I had the ability to reflect on the album for a few more weeks. But you know, reviews can't go on forever and even as is mine was 15 minutes long, which is I think long enough for a 40 minute album. Yeah. I think if I had anything else to add to the album, it would probably be those things.

But beyond that, I love the record. I was super impressed with it. Yeah. And just to comment on the sexuality thing, I thought that was a really brilliant stroke the way that he approached it.

You know, Flower Boy was very much his personal journey to almost self acceptance of that part of himself. And that was a huge part of the narrative and a huge part of the, you know, the thematic underlying of that entire album. I agree, which I think is, I think as a result of that is pretty tragic that professionally he couldn't continue to title the album scumfuck Flower Boy because it just ended up getting reduced down to Flower Boy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And I thought on the heels of Flower Boy, Igor was interesting because you do have some of the , I think it's actually pretty beautiful that it didn't have to be the focal point. It's just in their subtly in the same way that you would, wouldn't have to make a big deal about it being a boy girl narrative. Sure. And I think that maybe is speaks to the acceptance that he has found with that part of himself and just, you know, the public at large, where we're not in a place in society where we have to address that this is a big deal.

It's just another relationship, you know, it's, I think that's really cool that we're at that point for him personally and also socially. Sure. No, I agree. I mean, we are and we aren't.

I feel like that's certainly where we're at when it comes to the musical listening audience with Tyler's audience, but you know, then simultaneously they can't air a cartoon featuring a gay rat wedding on Alabama public television because of that Arthur episode. Yeah. No, that's a great point. Yeah.

That's a great point. Yeah. We're there, but we're also kind of not there. Exactly.

We're not all, we're not all there. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a great point. I definitely don't want to diminish, you know, the ongoing struggle for that community, so cool, man. I agree. I agree.

Yeah. I appreciate you joining. Definitely check out Mr. Fontana's review on Igor on YouTube.

You got anything else you want to plug while you're here? Are you doing any live shows coming up? No live shows coming up in the immediate future, but hit up the YouTube channel, youtube.com slash the needle drop, youtube.com slash Fantano for more discussions on outside music topics and music culture topics and industry stuff and the needle drop on Twitter, a Fantano on Instagram. I'll see you guys there.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Okay.

Thanks again to Anthony for joining me today. Be sure to check out his review of Igor and all the other great content on his YouTube channel, The Needle Drop. Now I'd like to introduce my next guest, Chris Lambert. Chris is the co-host of Watching the Throne, a podcast that analyzes Kanye West's entire discography song by song.

Chris also writes about music for Forbes and recently published a piece outlining his interpretation of Igor's narrative. Together, Chris and I are going to walk through each song on Igor and give our thoughts on how it contributes to the overall narrative and try to answer just who this Igor character is. So without further ado, please welcome Mr. Chris Lambert.

Alright, I'm here with Chris Lambert. How are you doing, man? Yo, doing well. I'm excited to talk to you about Igor.

I feel like we're going to have a good conversation about this. Yeah, I think so. Like I mentioned in the preface of this conversation, your article is really great. I think especially in the time that you wrote it, I'm guessing that you've been living this album since the second it dropped.

Oh my God. Yeah, it came out and I listened to it for a few, maybe like an hour, two hours that night. Just kind of the initial listening and going back through parts and kind of piecing things together for the initial idea of what the album's doing and is it going to be something that I write about as deeply as I expected to, especially after Flower Boy and you've been talking about Flower Boy in this great way and laying it out. It made sense that maybe the next project was going to have a similar amount of depth and detail about it that wanted that kind of discussion.

So I was pretty happy on the first listen and following like going through the album and be like, okay, there's all the stuff there that you'd want for this kind of analysis and conversation just from art in general. And then the piece over the next few days was just, I think I listened to the album above 40 times as I was just like writing and going back through things, doing notes, then actually writing and editing. It was intensive. Cool man, well then you're the perfect person to talk to about this.

So just to give our listeners a little bit of objective, we're going to basically walk through track by track, Igor and kind of break down the narrative, not as in-depth as a dissect podcast or even one of your episodes on an hour long episode on one song. But I think the goal here is to give the listeners an idea of the overall narrative and some, cue them into some things to listen to so that they can start doing their own analysis and just give them a general understanding of what's going on and the overall arc of the project. We'll save our who is Igor question for the end because I think it's quite clear by the end and it's the way that you formatted your piece. So we'll end on who is Igor and we're going to just jump into the opening moments of the record which of course start with that, I think it's 15, 16 second, drawn out distorted synthesizer.

So that's of course Igor's theme which is a mostly instrumental track and the way that you framed it and the way that I also was framing it was a preface, kind of a theme that is going to be elaborated on throughout the album. So why don't you give your impression of what Igor's theme does for the album? Yeah, the big thing to me, one is saying it sets the tone of everything and I think for people that are non-music people just in the sense of not having a formal training that someone like yourself does or musicians do where you might be picking up on the actual music aspects that are going to be coming back and repeating throughout. For me it was looking at the lyrical aspects that were coming up and seeing that oh these things that are kind of mentioned here in these fragments are actually coming back through at key points in the album.

Referring specifically to the chorus the little Uzi Verts gives, right around town they get feel this one which is repeated a few times before being juxtaposed against got my got my got my eyes open and those two concepts really to me were looking at how the album is divided into what's going on in the relationship and then the awakening to what's going on in the relationship leading into moving on from things. So you see that album divided into those two portions and that's just coming through from these lyrics that are just part of the theme setting up like hey this is what the album is going to be about. Sure, yeah and those sentence fragments specifically come back in the album verbatim word for word. So I think you're right to assume that given the title, given the instrumental majority instrumental track those fragments are not arbitrary and there's evidence to be seen throughout the album that they are in fact kind of placed there to give you an idea of what's to come.

And it's interesting yeah my ears always go to production, always go to instrumentals and I really actually try to listen to lyrics surprisingly enough. And the first thing I noticed was that distorted bass well it's hard not to notice that distorted bass but as I kept listening you know just like these lyrical fragments you know they're going to feel this one and got my eyes open are going to reoccur. That solo bass to me is kind of Igor it's it's in literally every single song even on songs that it doesn't really make sense that it's there which I think act as a harmonic through line in terms of keeping it harmonically or thematically cohesive on a sonic level because this album to me does vary in sounds but there are certain elements that tie it all together and make it sound very cohesive and I think the biggest example of that is the distorted bass. So that's definitely something and again it's like the first 15 seconds that you hear it to me that sounds intentional I don't know for sure obviously but it just seems like you have these recurring lyrics you have this recurring instrument is that a coincidence it's hard to say no when it when there's a lot of evidence that we're going to see here as we move on to support this so okay so Igor's theme yeah so I kind of just one last note on that it reminded me of forward in a weird way forward being the first song in flower boy and this again was more evidence that Tyler's thinking conceptually about this where he the first song is not really a part of the narrative but more foreshadowing or preface to things to come the same way they did with forward which was of course more lyrical but it outlined all the thematic qualities or themes that were going to reoccur through the album and again I think Igor seemed as that in just kind of a slightly different manner or different in execution.

So the album progresses to Earthquake not to be mistaken with earthquake and you know I'll reserve my thoughts and let you take the lead on this one where do you think this fits into the narrative? To me this is more of an opening up like Igor's theme is kind of these fragments and giving you I described in the article is kind of the the painter showing you the palette these are the colors I'm going to be using. Earthquake to me is almost like the sketch of what the painting is going to be it's introducing and diving into more of how these things that you just got on the palette are going to be used on the album rather than having more of the story qualities that the songs afterwards have you're getting more of the mood elaborated on but you're seeing a lot of the tension. So I'm not occurring in this that there's definitely an intensity of feeling and emotion that Tyler's feeling but there are these little moments that show that it's not just a love song right?

This is very much an 808s and heartbreak style album to where things just aren't going to go well. Yeah I agree definitely with the it's it is to me the narrative has a start we're still getting a preface we're still getting mood which coincides with Tyler not even really being on these songs you know he's very subtle on on Igor's theme and he doesn't really come in in a meaningful way on earthquake until the last bridge and that's like two and a half minutes into the track. So I think that's also evidence that again we're getting mood we're getting like you said we're getting to starting to see the picture it's almost like a thesis statement that you know this is going to be an up and down relationship and earthquake and the interesting thing is and I guess leads us into I think but there's no honeymoon on this album there's no the love that he is speaking of is nowhere to be found really aside from his infatuation but we don't get the again that honeymoon period where there things are well you know we're getting we're starting with earthquake going quickly into I think which just begins his begins Tyler Tyler begins to define the problems in the relationship so you know I think as the line which for me actually is really telling I wish you would call me by your name because I'm sorry which call me by your name of course was a film that Tyler really likes starring what's Timothy Charlemagne right Charlemagne Charlemagne Charlemagne but I thought that was interesting yeah it's an interesting parallel if you've seen that film because it's about a teenager and a someone in his mid 20s I believe who two men that end up having a relationship and spoiler it by the end of that movie The Older Man you know the Timothy's character finds out that that older man is getting married to a woman which I thought was a pretty clever line to put here at the beginning of the narrative because it kind of foreshadows the dynamic between Tyler and this love interest so that was a line I wanted to call out as particularly clever but also we're starting to see the up and down quality he says you're such a distraction mess with tea on and off which is of course a play on golf but tea standing for Tyler and there this on and off type relationship yet the hook says I think I'm falling in love this time it's for real which of course is the more the romantic aspect of this relationship but the the verses kind of clue you in that things are not well or not ideal in Tyler's mind no they're definitely not and one of the things that kind of highlights this opening up into the narrative that we talked about is you look at earthquake and Tyler never comes outright and says I think I'm falling in love with you he hints at it like you're making me feel this way and your love is shaking me up but it's not this reciprocation of the emotion where he's just straight up saying I want this with you I need this with you like I'm falling for you so you have the beginnings of Tyler having these emotions on earthquake and then having that elaborated upon I think to where he's saying this is what I want from you and I'm having not just a reaction to you but an actual like love this is love sure yeah this is more than a fatuation this is I well I think I'm falling in love I think this is what this is and I did want to clue the listeners into something that you said in the article that I thought was interesting and only because these types of things come up time and time again with this album which I think is really cool the earthquake ends with if you listen in the background towards the end of that song you hear Tyler counting one two three not in a rhythmic way but you hear and progress counting one two three and then I think starts with you know that four four four four repetition which is a nice I guess just a little clever link between the songs I bring that up because in I think he said there's the line I'm your puppet you are Jim Henson which of course there's going to be a song called puppet which is going to you know being a callback or this is foreshadowing to that song I guess we can say we're a discussion for about puppet because you kind of had some interesting thoughts about this idea of puppet and Jiminy cricket is that correct yeah good old Jiminy cricket puppet yeah which is I think there's like a general theory on puppet that's just like yeah that makes sense and then the Jiminy cricket theory are just like wait which you can go that far with it if you want to but the general theory that doesn't involve Jim yet they still think it's applicable sure yeah we'll save that for puppet but yeah so I think this is again like I said you know the first time we hear Tyler at length on the album and to me this is really where the narrative begins you know it's clear that this is a one-sided relationship or it's becoming clear and again like you said we're getting a sense of how deeply Tyler feels for this person and how the love interest is in control of him because the love interest is ambivalent or scared or we don't quite know at this point but more to come on that so we get into the next track which is a brief interlude spoken by drug Carmichael and he is the reapprearing voice in the album who kind of drives some of these narrative points but this is the first time that we hear from him drug Carmichael is a comedian and entertainer who's Tyler's friend he's also the guy that conducted the interview for flower boy that's on YouTube so I'll let you speak to his entrance and I guess his function in the album yeah this is one of the things I talked about a lot of albums will have not just albums but narrative art have inroads that help the audience engage with the work and find the road to the deeper meaning more find the road to just what is happening on the album so this is something you're familiar with with the tip tip of butterfly and Kendrick Lamar's use of the poem on tip tip of butterfly as a device that foreshadows what the songs are going to be but then at the end of the album also recaps for anybody that reaches that point like oh this is what was going on and this is what's being said you can start to have something by which any of these mysterious parts make sense and that happens in books it happens in movies so for Tyler here to be using a jarad and the interview as this kind of tool to give people an idea of what is going to be happening on the album you can listen to a song like this and say okay this has a reason for being here how does this apply to everything that's happening and we see this push and pull dynamic between Tyler and his love interest on the album like what you run from you end up chasing and Tyler many times throughout the album is pushing this guy away even as he's coming back to him and we even see that with the end of the album are we still friends after the relationships passed he still ends up chasing something it might not be what he initially expected to be chasing but it's something and it also brings in the theme of running which was one of the fragments that we heard on Igor's theme so there's a bit more of importance there as well as the running wasn't one of the primary fragments that we talked about but it's still there and seems like it was highlighted to be because it's still an important part of the album so exactly what you run from you end up chasing you get a more of an elaboration of how the idea of running is being used on the album which then gets brought up even more on running out of time but this also sets up the idea of there's an obstacle which we already know from the previous two tracks that things aren't easy between them like you know scribe there's no honeymoon phase and on earthquake we got the mention of this woe-vicky figure that's this wicked woman that's kind of in the picture but it's just kind of left at those two or three lines and I think you don't really get any more elaboration on it but once Carmichael mentions the obstacle outright we see the girl that's the third part of this love triangle become more of a focus on the album especially between the next few songs yeah so again we get the kind of on the nose you know what you run from leads into running out of time as the next the next song and yeah to your point this is when we really get started to get a good clear understanding of the relationship dynamic and how it's kind of not doomed but complicated you can you start to get you know why Tyler is frustrated but also you know yearning for this person for me it really comes into clarity on verse two of running out of time where he says take your mask off I need her out the picture take your mask off stop lying to these end words stop lying to yourself I know the real you don't save don't save don't save me and again he comes back Halloween ain't for a minute lose the costume so this to me clearly implies you know there's a woman involved with this man that he has feelings for and that this man may not be comfortable with his sexuality and Tyler is encouraging him to take the mask off so to speak he's encouraging to him to come to come to terms with that part of himself and lose the charade that he you know he and you know a lot of day individuals have to make this transition to to accept that part of themselves and express that part of themselves outwardly it was that the same understanding that you had yeah very much so it seems a very relevant portion in elaboration I think the idea of elaboration is going to be one of the devices that really gets talked about with Igor over time and maybe Tyler as an artist over time just how these things from one song just start to get developed and elaborated on over the course of the album but that refers back to me to that initial foreshadowing of Call Me By Your Name and using the illusion to that movie to bring in the context of the story of that movie and we see how that context from Call Me By Your Name where this relationship between Timothy Shalemay and Armie Hammer ends up not going anywhere because Armie Hammer is going to end up with this girl he's not being out with himself to the world about things and where Timothy this was such an emotional experience for him and the army is just like yeah yeah see you later yeah yeah that's definitely good call out yeah I really like this part about the narrative and about this album it's we begin with this kind of blurred picture and every song that picture you know it's like a click in the focus and each song it's another click and another click and we're just and each time it gets clearer and clearer about what's going on here what Tyler's feeling and the dynamics between this relationship so we have another one of these kind of links I guess between songs and what the lyric in running out of time he says I've been running out of spells to make you love me and this leads into the next song New Magic Wand and I'll let you open open the conversation about this song which is of course prefaced with Drawed Carmichael saying sometimes you got to close the door to open a window yeah which is normally used in such a positivity kind of style right like oh you know what you have this job that you may not like but sometimes you just got to close the door to open a window to something new yeah but here Tyler takes it in a way of yeah you know what this girl is in the picture she's the door I need to close so then maybe we have a shot at a relationship yeah and just to see it applied in that way it starts to show a bit of the twistedness that starts coming into Tyler Psyche as the stress ramps up yeah you had running out of time which starts to add this tension in the stress too I don't have much left to do I don't have much time left to make this work so there's a desperation that begins to enter into the picture and you see the desperation and the jealousy and the jealousy is called out specifically with I saw a photo you look joyous my eyes are green I eat my veggies I need to get her out the picture like Tyler's not making it's a very uh like there's not a lot of subtext there in terms of like does he does he want to get rid of this girl it's it's clear he's jealous and she needs to be gone but Jared or Gerard opening up this song with the closed door to open a window just shows again that kind of device of an in-road like if you're wondering what the song's about you go back to this initial fragments and it starts to give you that insight into what's going on and why it's going on yeah that's a great point and the cool thing about this song which you helped me kind of articulate when I read your piece was you know I always saw the duality between new magic wand meaning on one hand magic wand like the Photoshop tool that you're able to you know scrub some of my out of the picture you know need to get her out of the picture and then over the course of the song that metaphor changes and I'll let you speak to how that changes yeah it starts to get more and more terrifying because Tyler does up front use this photo imagery to really bring in this idea for anybody that's used Photoshop the magic wand he has in that first verse get her out of the picture she's really fucking out my frame she's not developed like we are so picture frame and developed I'll get it this kind of Photoshop image kind of thing but once you get to the third verse you have Tyler straight up saying she's gonna be dead I just got a magic wand which completely changes how you're looking at the idea of what the magic wand is and what it's capable of and in the bridge Tyler actually tries to force this ultimatum on the love interest saying you you under oath now pick a side and if you don't I'll pick you both it's not a joke murder she wrote you have run run run run in the background yeah which completely changes then your idea of running and running now it's no longer Tyler's running at a time but he's becoming scary enough to the point where he's kind of pushing people to run from sure and the subtext there of course is the magic wand is now a gun yes which of course now of course the next song is a boy's a gun again another great thematic and kind of narrative link into the next song and so just how we got that kind of dualistic view over the course of new magic wand we get another kind of dualism here on boys a gun the idea being that a gun keeps you safe but is also very dangerous for you and that's kind of the theme presented throughout this track but we also get more of Tyler's encouragement to for this his love interest to take his mask off he says in verse one take your hoodie off white hide your face for me make up your fucking mind I'm sick I'm sick of waiting patiently and then we also get in verse two more of these strange dynamic between him this love interest and the woman he says you invited me to breakfast why the fuck your ex here well let's see if you you round the god around this time next year and again I feel like where this song acknowledges infatuation and and motions for this character by the end it gets I wouldn't say sinister but I mean he ends verse three stay the fuck away from me I ain't gonna repeat myself but stay the fuck away from me and that's gonna lead into puppet but did you have anything to add to a boy's gun yeah I just really like the dynamics that this starts to bring into place just with you talked about the duality of things and that he's viewing the love interest as protective but also dangerous but we see Tyler also have that same dichotomy that he goes from somebody that's very much in love to by the end rejecting the guy and you can see that Tyler himself can be a gun as well sure he can be somebody that's uh offensive and defensive in that way or protective but also dangerous if he decides to pivot on you and you also start to have more of the realizations of the issues in the relationship in that first verse you have Tyler saying how come you the best to me I know you the worst for me boy you sweet a sugar diabetic to the first degree which you're seeing him understanding that this just isn't a positive romance yeah maybe in the way that he was talking about on earthquake or I think or even running out of time he's starting to see that being a puppet to somebody and this guy being Jim Henson isn't necessarily this romantic thing but a dangerous thing yeah it comes into focus that he's losing control of his emotions and that his emotions are at the will of this person which is exactly what's elaborated on the next song puppet of course was which was alluded to back in I think and you know this again has a kind of dualistic angle to it you know it starts out as traditional puppet you know someone's in control Tyler's love interest is in control of him pulling the strings but again by the end we come to have another interpretation of a puppet so do you want to speak to that portion yeah I love and I don't know if this is a call back to flower boy but there's the line on flower boy about how Tyler is not good with bitches right he says something about that and then I will not pay no fetch sure yeah yeah yeah and then here this first verse opens with him legitimately going and fetching this guy I want to talk I want to call you and talk I want to walk to your front door knock after I stop my vehicle drive your city because we live an hour apart land at your driveway and put it in park then do the third line in the verse which is I want to talk to you walk to your front door knock then back to my house and we pack up our bikes and we ride through the park so Tyler drives an hour to this guy to pick him up and bring him all the way back to Tyler's place an hour back just so they can ride bikes in the park so he's he's fetching pretty hard at this point yeah um which I don't know if that's an intentional if he had that in mind but I just like the the bit of a connection and one of the things that I really like is the moment of the twist happens in the second verse and you get Tyler saying what do you need do you need bread do you need this do you need a hug do you need to be alone he's being so comforting and caring and concerned and then gives this very cheesy romantic your number one one on my list to you I'm Santa and you're like oh well despite how brainwashed he is by this guy it's kind of sweet the very next line where is Rudolph your parasitic and the where's Rudolph I didn't read it correctly but it's it's a rhetorical question like where's Rudolph and it makes me think about a boy's a gun you have you invited me to breakfast why the fuck your ex here it's a similar thing but this time given in this metaphoric way like where is Rudolph like you're parasitic I do not have self-control I'm starting to wonder is this my free will or yours so in this moment where the girl comes up again when the guy still hasn't made a choice when he's still being wishy washy Tyler just finally snaps and realizes how painful this relationship is and that's when you then get the chorus and you have Kanye coming in saying did I wait too long which starts to get into this whole idea of who Kanye is on this song and on the album then sure and I'll let you speak to to that because that is not something that I thought about or it's not about yet was Kanye's role as as a narrative character so to speak and I thought that you have an interesting theory on on who he might represent or what his function was so I'll let you speak to that yeah so we have uh Gerard at the end saying but at some point you come to your senses and you know that that's what the song's building to and we can see Tyler go through that motion in the opening verses so if the song starts with Tyler still out of his senses and then ends with him having come to his senses you could imagine that in the middle would be that portion where he starts to interact with his senses or has that realization Kanye saying did I wait too long almost feels to me like he's representative of Tyler's senses or this wise figure that's coming into the picture and being like hey they're young man like I've been watching you deal with this like did I wait too long to maybe offer you some advice well here I am to offer you some advice like hopefully I wait too long kind of like a Rafiki in the Lion King de Simba right he shows up and is just like hey by the way you had all this time to reflect but you need to remember who you really are and Kanye's verse is very much in that way where he's saying you lost son and you've been trying to find your way to me and that characterization of you've been trying to find your way to me is why I'm unsure of Kanye's more of a metaphorical figure representative of the better senses or representative of Tyler's conscience in this way which is where the Jiminy crickets connection comes in uh one of the most famous puppets maybe the most famous puppet is Pinocchio from the Disney portrayal or presentation of the character and in Pinocchio you have this cricket Jiminy cricket who acts as Pinocchio's conscience and is there throughout the story as Pinocchio who wants to be a real boy keeps losing himself along the way getting into these bad predicaments lying there's one whole scene where Pinocchio is drinking and playing cards and gambling and Jiminy's like Pinocchio what are you doing yeah but the movies eventually Pinocchio showing off the better the better aspects of his nature and eventually becoming a real boy and I could see Kanye kind of playing that role in a song called puppet of this Jiminy cricket figure that's saying you know you're doing something that I hate to see you've been trying to find your way to me the representative of your conscience like this is what you need to do you need to take a breather and just calm down and at the end of the song in the outro he's just telling Tyler breathe on a song you know what you need to do you need to breathe on a song and as Kanye's instructing him to breathe on a song that you get uh it's not an ad lib but the background vocal saying cut me loose you know cut me loose yeah yeah and that cut me loose starts to feel more and more as we've seen how Tyler connects songs whether it's a lyric in the verse or something in the outro to be foreshadowing the arrival of Igor on the next part which is what's good which oh my goodness gets back to the Tyler the creator that I think a lot of people expect to hear on a song so I think the most basic theory with Kanye on puppet is this that he's representative in some way whether it's just somebody giving advice to Tyler or Tyler's conscience or senses being like hey this is what you need to do do this he just serves that role of helping get Tyler back on the path that he needs to go and giving him some direction about how to move on yeah sure it's almost like a father figure in a way which is you know it's no mistake perhaps that um you know Kanye and and Pharrell are kind of his you know musical and artistic idols but I would assume with someone without a father would also be looking to those figures to give them kind of spiritual advice as well which you know may or may not apply but I think that's kind of interesting it being Kanye is very interesting in that way so yeah so this you you mentioned cut me loose of course um goes into what's good and you know that's kind of symbolic of cutting the puppet strings and we hear jorad say but at some point you come to your senses and we get the your interpretation as I understand it was the full expression of the eager character um or maybe that was mine I can't exactly remember what you said was it was it that this was the e-gore's introduction or was it that this was the full expression of Igor uh full it's I guess we had seen some rumblings of Igor like you're seeing a little bit of this attitude on a new magic wand and boy's a gun so your and puppet starts to get into a little bit too so I feel like the rumblings of him but this is this is at least the full expression if not the introduction of Igor in like his fullest form at least the full expression of Igor yeah I definitely agree with that um it's and like you said it's the the most Tyler sounding or traditional Tyler sounding song on the album and he's even self-referential to the point where it almost the narrative is is a little bit compromised you know he references the car crash that he was in and which you know of course e-gore character is is Tyler essentially or a part of Tyler so it makes sense to me that he would take that liberty but um yeah I mean there's definitely some narrative cues on this song as well uh the refrain on part two is I see the light of course kind of symbolizing his kind of rebirth is his um um cutting of the strings of the puppet he's kind of free again and if there's anything else you want to elaborate on this song go ahead but to me that's you know in a nutshell that's what's good it's kind of this kind of this rebirth he's got a swagger back and this signals to the beginning of the process of kind of recovery or closure or letting go of this love interest I think you compared maybe it's worth bringing up your comparison to the Yeezus character um and the way that Kanye used kind of an ego to overcome some of his more sensitive or emotional qualities that he had within yeah one of the cool things on Yeezus is that you start very much with the Yeezus persona character showing off is very like dehumanized only interested in like sexual gratification and ego which is what you get from on site and Black Skinhead I Am A God is a similar thing there's just all this uh self-interest that's magnified to the F degree and a lot of people view that initially as like that's just Kanye he thinks of himself this way but how we interpret the album is that Kanye's throwing that up as this is the defense mechanism that I had in the wake of my heartache and heartbreak which starts to get revealed in the second act of Yeezus following new slaves where the outro of Yeezus is actually the sample of a Hungarian band that talks about the sun ailing and sinking below these waters and the world going dark until this woman arrives and saves everyone by rejuvenating the sun and you see on Holmai liquor I'm in it's Blood on the Leaves and Guild Trip all of this emotional vulnerability that the Yeezus character had been hiding that was actually causing this pain that he was trying to mask with the ego and Tyler had some involvement with Yeezus and the production of Yeezus like the initial version of Bound 2 which was called Bound 1 in popular like fan vernacular had Tyler as a producer on it and Tyler in what's good actually interpolates two lines from Yeezus which is on new slaves Tyler has the lines oh where is it's Tyler has a line red nose red nose all your n-words clowns and words turning it up while shit I'm tearing it down yeah and that's that's the interpolation from new slaves you're about to turn shit up I'm about to tear shit down and then the next line actually refers to Tyler hard to believe in God when there ain't no mirrors around which could also be a reference or interpolation of I am a god sure Kanye as a Yeezus figure is just declaring this self-worth so we see on Yeezus the Kanye oh just to make clear that the hard to believe in Godline comes right after the interpolation of of Yeezus so it seems you know likely that that was intentional right just back to back like that yeah so if Kanye was using the Yeezus figure to hide up or to cover up or as a counter to the vulnerability and pain he was feeling to see Tyler have Kanye on the previous track as kind of this father figure to then do the same on the next track like I'm just gonna dip into ego and try to use ego as a means of catharsis and to regain control of myself after being somebody else's puppet is specifically referring to a song new slaves uh we're Kanye on that song he's talking more about consumerism and culture and being a slave to contracts and industry and Tyler interpolating it in such a way that it applies to a relationship where he had started to be a new slave and now he's rejecting uh that characterization of himself I think is really cool and the one last thing that I really like is just in the first verse like you have term I lights on to really start the song which gets back to cut me loose in a way uh which is more this ego or ego character saying like yeah turn my lights on like I'm ready to step forward and take the stage and be in the spotlight and it's almost like he's chastising uh the softer Tyler that we've seen on the album to this point when he says how the fuck you quiet with the mic on like the mic's been on this whole time and you've been yeah so quiet like watch me watch me do this and the verse ending with him saying if the cop says my name bitch I'm Igor yeah we're at least getting this to be the first time that Tyler on the album aside from Igor's theme has referred to himself in that character with that name sure yeah and one more thing to kind of I guess justify this interpretation of ego as mask or even ego as um you know a mechanism for from which to kind of overcome is you know there's on flower boy that's exactly what he's doing on songs like I ain't got time and who that boy where he is quite literally driving away from his problems and you know using his ego to kind of mask his uh loneliness and you know anxiety about you know his life and the direction of his life so it's it's not a new concept for Tyler to kind of use that alter ego to either mask or to overcome and it seems like in this instance it's definitely to overcome because we get into uh I think this is where you interpreted part two is this where it begins I started part two with puppet oh god just as puppets started uh more of a change though the it was more just a general structure of the idea I think where you could argue part one kind of ends and part two begins but what's good I think at least by there is the start of the second part sure and and from gong-on thank you is the next song we'll talk about and from here to me this is such a shift emotionally and sonically that it's very clear that this becomes kind of a you know if he was reborn on what's good this becomes now a new journey he's going on which he's going to you know process all the emotions that we have when we are at the end of a relationship and trying to move on you know we all go through kind of a rollercoaster of different emotions and I think Tyler does that beautifully on the last half of the album starting with gong-gon you know verse one makes it very clear that he's grateful for the relationship says at least I had it instead of never which is like breaks my heart every time I hear that line um and you know verse three to me was at least an attempt at acceptance he says you got your thing I got nothing but memories that again referring to the girl but then coming back with I know your secrets I'm not bitter and nothing I understand that everybody making a choice according to plan and we had two different blue blueprints so he's you know he's acknowledging the fact that you know maybe this person's not ready to take the mask off so to speak and just because it affects him in a negative way he's able to kind of see outside of himself and understand that everyone's on their own timeline everyone has their own blueprint and he's removing himself from their equation and just kind of almost like wishing him luck with that and again he says you never lived in your truth I'm just happy I lived in it and I find I finally found peace so peace which again is a kind of a beautiful sentiment and it really turns the album to me emotionally in that last part you never lived in your truth I think could be the supply of the relationship dynamics right getting back from call me by your name to take your mask off to take your hoodie off to now saying you never lived in your truth I'm just happy I lived in it like I got to experience this thing with a real you but now I have peace so Sia but you at least get some catharsis and have him finding some catharsis in that situation and trying to come to terms with this guy not having come to terms with everything yeah and so there we get the talking go ahead I was just gonna say one of the a bit of a summary of what you're saying about the shift in tone you can just see how past tense the song is in a way that the other songs before it weren't and you have that great imagery at the very beginning comparing scars before dinner like the first part of the album was more the development of wounds or these open wounds that exist and now they're scars and just having this kind of past tense to everything really does highlight everything you were just saying about how this is in the next phase this is moving on this is catharsis everything sure and then we have or just to call this out as a kind of fun fact gone gone thank you as track 10 on the album and on the season on flower boy I guess we haven't heard that episode yet but you're gonna realize that every every track 10 on a Tyler album is this kind of at least two part sometimes three part song that is separated with a slash so the second part of this song is thank you and before we hear that portion of the song we hear a draw Carmichael again saying I hate wasted potential that shit crushes your spirit it really does it crushes your soul and you had some really great thoughts I thought on the on that line in particular in your in your piece so you want to speak on that yeah just another one of those foreshadowing elements that I think you could try reading it in terms of the song but I took it more as setting up the transition in Tyler's thought process between gone gone thank you to I don't love you anymore into are we still friends because I think there could be some people that maybe hear this and get to are we still friends are like why does he want to be friends where is this coming from is this Game of Thrones season eight just sudden twist in logic and you can see this idea starting here with draw'd saying I hate wasted potential like that crushing your spirit really is something that's next level is one thing to have this emotional turmoil that Travis had had over the course of the album but to have something be so wasted that it crushes your spirit you would maybe try to avoid that going on and you see sentiments of that develop further on I don't love you anymore with but this might just be better for us you know and that thought of okay and what way if you're not gonna be a couple what are you going to be leading into are we still friends so you see this arc that happens on this final actor second part of the album really be introduced with that quote about wasted potential sure yeah that's a great reading of that and I don't think we need to talk too much about thank you it's pretty straightforward and there's not a lot of lyrics but you know just thank you for the love thank you for the joy and then your kind of melancholy but I will never want to fall in love again which always just reminds me of the if you've ever been through a breakup you know when you're in the middle of it you're like I'm never gonna be in a relationship ever again but and another kind of cool thing was if you listen on the bridge you hear got my eyes open and it's the same exact sample that is used on your theme which again if you're kind of viewing in this two-part structure that you frame the album in it's a call back to part two or a foreshadowing of part two which we're now in with Tyler kind of seeing light his eyes open cutting the strings and then now working to let go so then we get I don't love you anymore and I guess my general take away from this was you know Tyler in the process of letting go whether he really is is you know not not clear because we do get are we still friends but why don't we talk a little bit about I don't love you anymore yeah I really like just in the first verse how he kind of showcases the ways in which he's moving on emotionally or at least from the relationship like he's saying I have heavy feelings for you it's no secret but like I don't know I realize there's more fish in the sea like so I won't walk around with my head down like I got beat up and I think there he really just summarizes yeah I'm gonna be okay especially following the last couple tracks it's like I can admit I had emotions and this is what went on but I'm already thinking ahead and I don't feel that he's saying these things ironically or sarcastically or anything like that it feels to me kind of like an earnest understanding of the situation and how he'll move forward sure yeah and then you mentioned it before but this song ends with which I believe it's Tyler's voice just pitched up but it says but this might be better for us you know not to it's cut off leads directly into the song through the album's last track are we still friends which was which for me was like a a variation of forgiveness I think if you're willing to allow someone that you have felt strongly for to be your friend after the relationship has kind of been compromised to me that's kind of an active forgiveness and it's certainly kind of letting go of any kind of animosity that he once felt if you're if you're willing to be in their presence and still have a positive experience what was your interpretation of that no very very similar and I don't know if it's something that people have experienced in their regular life but I know in college I had a lot of like things where I was like oh my god this girl's amazing this is gonna be like something special and then it didn't go that way and I could relate to this album in that narrative but I also would have those that sense of there's something about like you as a person that I just enjoy being around it would be a waste for us never to interact never to talk like can we just be friends and it's funny that a year after that a couple years after that to ever think about the person as having been a romantic interest because at that point you have transitioned to being friends and it's still it's fun it's great you realize why you weren't going to work or what was wrong but there's something very cathartic and nice about that and to have that point in yourself to be able to have that transition and to not blame the person not blame yourself not dwell on it but to really transcend what was and to look to something better just because you know that there's potential you know that's I don't know there's connection I think that's really a beautiful place to be able to reach yeah and I think this is what you're learning to earlier it calls back to that the idea of waste of potential and you know with some relationships if there is the possibility to be friends you're still getting it's not completely wasted potential you might have a disagreement on how fully realize that potential could be but being friends is better than you know not having this person in the life at all so the ironic thing about love is it often is this on-off switch it's either all or nothing because the potential is so heightened it's so kind of infinite that if you can't have everything you just might as well have nothing because there's no in-between and that's kind of I still have a really fully formed my thoughts on the end of this album there's a few things for me that are a little bit mysterious that I'll call out maybe if you have some thoughts on but you know the the album ends it doesn't resolve harmonically and it ends on the same synthesizer that you hear in the beginning of Igor except it's subdued and it's a little less it was less it's lower in in both overall volume but also the distortion is less but it's the same drawn out single note base that we get in the beginning of Igor Igor's theme and that was interesting I don't know it could just be me looking way too much into it but it doesn't resolve there is like as much as we are we still friends is this very swingy six eight almost anthemic quality that does really bring this out into a close to not then harmonically cut the album off with a nice resolution just seemed way too deliberate like I just don't know how that couldn't be on purpose so I'm not sure if you notice that at all and I guess my question is could that somehow thematically tie into what Tyler's trying to say here is it just an unresolved story that ended kind of well given the circumstances or I don't know if you have any thoughts on that? Real fast a quick thought it I just love the fact that you're such a music person and I'm such a literary person and we end up reaching the same conclusions from completely different methods which reminds me of like the connection between devil and a new dress and runaway right like we arrived at a connection between the two songs just from the lyrical content and the narrative content in that way and you arrived at this brilliant observation of the the sonic connection between them with this empty note that's not present at the end of devil and new dress and then present at the start of runaway showing the sonic connection and I think that's the same thing here like that unresolved nature in the music is really there in the unresolved nature of the lyrics and the question of are we still friends it's not thank goodness we're friends I'm happy we're friends like now we're friends nothing declarative like that you're ending with this question and to have the music unresolved in that same way that the character is unresolved in the actual dialogue that's happening yeah it seems very very fitting to me yeah it's interesting I'm just looking at the song Tyler right now it's like there's literally a question mark which is the last song that you know the album ends you know with a question mark literally in the song title and then we have this unresolved note at the end which could be kind of a question mark itself which maybe I'll preview it here the the note that the album ends on is without going into the music theory it is the cadential basically it's implying the cadential chord that would be resolved basically it's a chord of tension that's why it feels like unresolved if you loop the entire album back to that beginning note on Igor it resolves it so it ends up being I for me it's so hard to not have that be purposeful that is one hell of a coincidence so it either is a clever loop of the album and or it's you know this thing is cyclical you know are we still friends question mark leads me to believe well can they be friends or if they tried to be friends with this whole thing start again that's that's a that's a good point as well and I think that's one of the cool things that happens in different mediums like they're in ways in which filmmakers will convey the same thing through the method of cinematography like outfits attire editing all that they can imply an unresolved nature at the end of the movie or a loopback nature to things and same thing in literature there means and methods by which artists will accomplish that so to hear the way that you break it down because you have this music theory knowledge is always so fascinating because it relates so well to what I see both in cinema and literature yeah and that to me that is why I get so passionate about these artists in particular is to me there's too many too many things we can point to that are saying and then to your point of both coming to the same conclusion in different ways there's too many things we can point to that are evident that these things are purposeful and if it was just a one-off instance that you know devil in a new dress resolves into runaway maybe that is a coincidence but there's so many other things in that album that you can point to that would give you know make a very strong case that that is not the case that it's you know indeed purposeful and it serves to exemplify a larger thematic point that they're trying to express and of all the albums that I've dissected they all do that in their own way and to do that to me is incredibly difficult it's you know storytelling on the you know on the level of a filmmaker you know they're just using music and lyrics instead of characters and visuals and I just think that's the the highest potential of music is this kind of concept where you are you know it's an enjoyable listen for one but it's also telling this larger story and telling you one giving you a story that you can relate to but also could perhaps teach you something about your own experience or make more clear things that happen to you that you didn't quite articulate and it helps you find a words to express what you're feeling I think that's why music is so attractive to people because it works on this literary you know you have the literary element which is expressed in the lyrics which I know a lot of people connect with but it's amplified by music which is ambiguous and abstract and a lot of the times the things that we feel are abstract and they can't really be expressed in words and again that's just why I'm so passionate about these kind of artists and these kind of albums is that I just I think they're monuments I think they're these great artifacts of human experience and and it takes this kind of analysis to really wrap your head around it but so does every great piece of art I feel like to really fully understand what the artist is trying to say so I guess on that note we can try to answer the the question who is Igor yeah which is a big question right I mean especially given the album title and the opening of Igor's theme there's all this emphasis on Igor and what exactly he's supposed to represent and be on this album and I think the same way we've seen a lot of like duality and dichotomy on this album which I don't know if that's a theme that Tyler was going for I'd say with how much we see it laid out like the beginning and end of a boy's a gun and how he goes from you protect me to you can be dangerous same thing with puppet like it's this romantic thing and then it isn't or magic wand being photoshop or a weapon yeah it seems that there's this duality to it and Igor in popular media is often associated with the sidekick to a scientist and a figure in gothic literature or more horror based science fiction that involves vampires or scientists or monsters in some way and Igor is kind of this hunchback figure that assists there've been some portrayals of them as more sinister more comical there've been some attempts to give him his own kind of leading role but for the most part as like the stock character that's uh the assistance and I think you can see Tyler start to ramp up the horror aspects of the character or at least the gothic representation not representation but the gothic nature and borrowing more of that attitude when you see what's good where you're getting more of the darker soundscape and that darker soundscape does come in on new magic wand as well and you can see him maybe giving this representation of Igor as somebody that was a side piece in this relationship and he's really showcasing some of the more horrible aspects of this character on what's good and not horrible in like a he's a terrible person or anything but just horrible in the sense of like darkness ego ego which mccollits that gothic nature and representation that you get from a darker story or like a a black mirror episode that's a little bit more terrifying in nature but then by the end of the album with are we still friends I think you start to see Igor settling into more of the typical assistant role like I'll just be your friend like you're gonna be uh doing your thing I'm here on the side I'm just this little weirdo it's going to be like with you at the end of it all so I think you see this representation of a dramatic figure versus by the end a more sidekick figure and seeing how Tyler represents it each way is cool yeah that was I'm glad that when you're piece you mentioned that I was glad they read that because that's exactly what I was thinking in my interpretation it's always good to get outside palletation um that you know we're on release thinking in the same similar ways um yeah just to take it a step further I think more evidence of that is the whole marketing campaign and this vote Igor and this kind of political character which you know if this guy is trying to decide between Tyler and this woman he's encouraging us to to vote Igor and so that's kind of what how I interpreted where that kind of marketing and the visual aspect came in to play but I agree that the sidekick the grotesque side kick I guess is is the main kind of underlying characteristic of of who Igor is and and we obviously see that displayed throughout the entire album in the sonics and the themes and the kind of dualistic nature and I think in the best and you probably let me know what you think but the best villains and the best weirdos or whatever it may be in film always there's a scene or two where it inspires empathy in a villain or in the grotesque character there the like the penguin in Batman you know you get a sense of where he's where he came from and you actually even though he's his grotesque and horrible person you kind of start to understand why he is like that and I think Igor is a little bit the same way like it could Igor could express himself as this bombastic egotistical you know grotesque guy but we've also heard throughout the entire album he's sensitive at heart and his kind of the projections that he displays are essentially just a manifestation of of that sensitivity within and I think Tyler did a great job at showing both sides which I think the best films always do with the more villainous characters yeah having that light and dark aspect because it's like same thing with heroes too I think I think the best heroes have light and dark in them but the light outweighs the darkness right and with villains it just happens that the darkness outweighs the light and if you're able to show enough of both each ways you get really compelling dynamics and you see that even on the soundscape of this album having the darker aspects to the songs but then also having songs like Ganga on Thank You and you're just like what is this soundscape yeah it's it's very luscious throughout yeah yeah um cool well I think that was all I had I think in terms of our our goals hopefully that we accomplished them just kind of giving an outline of the narrative and just the the kind of overall themes of the album was there anything that you wanted to touch on that we didn't no I don't think so I think that covers the the major points very well good job to us yeah cool well I'm glad you can join me I think we'll probably both learn more the more we listen to this album as well the audience and yeah let the the audience know where you can hear more of your content yeah so I co-host the podcast Watching The Throne a lyrical analysis of Kanye West and we do this kind of lyrical deconstruction of Kanye's entire discography if you're interested in that very conversational and rambling at times but insightful at the same time I also write articles on hip hop and narrative art and Kanye specifically on Forbes and just google my name in Forbes and then we also have I'm excited about our first kind of merchandise collection coming out this upcoming Friday so very excited about that if you're already a fan of Watching The Throne and want to support us you can just go to watching throne.com and find that stuff there as along with all of our episodes and everything else very cool and for those curious DICEX merch season 4 merch is coming out next week too so nice it's a good time coming out yeah cool man yeah and everyone definitely check out the Igor piece that you wrote for Forbes I'll link it up on on Twitter tomorrow when we post this episode but that'll give you even a more concise kind of interpretation of the narrative to kind of to go along with our talk here today all right man well thanks for joining me and we definitely got to talk again soon yeah thanks all right see all right that's it everyone I hope you enjoyed today's special episode on Igor be sure to subscribe to the needle drop on youtube for more from Anthony Fantano and also check out Chris's podcast Watching The Throne on Spotify or wherever you listen okay thanks everyone I'll talk to you next week