We Should All Outgrow Our Heroes Like Tyler, The Creator

When Tyler, The Creator gave his fans a week’s notice before releasing his ninth studio album, “Don't Tap The Glass,” fans started offering their kneejerk reactions. The new album dropped nine months after his previous album, “CHROMAKOPIA” (while he’s still on tour), and already, fans are trying to evaluate whether it tops his last work or is a dud. Before the cycle of online debates repeats itself, I want to give the boy his flowers as an artist who has remained committed to outgrowing his heroes.

While Tyler is unique in his own right, his accolades inevitably invite comparisons to his heroes and mentors. Chief among them are the perpetually legacy-disgraced Kanye West, and more recently the fellow Los Angeles rapper Kendrick Lamar. After Lamar dropped his most recent album “GNX,” Tyler hopped on the beat from the track “Hey Now,” turning it into his own song, “That Guy.” Tyler pays fealty to the rappers he’s inspired by, and with Lamar, he says he’s “the biggest out the city after.”

Despite nobody knowing shit about what the album was going to be (or who’d be featured on it) when it was surprise announced last week, that didn’t stop folks (present party included) from spiralling, assuming Tyler would play follow the leader with Lamar. Tyler's cheerleading of Lamar’s pre-Drake beef and his fandom for underappreciated introspective album “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” led to fans comparing “CHROMAKOPIA” as his version of Lamar’s fifth album. 

The noise must’ve reached Tyler, because he uncharacteristically took to Twitter to hype down listeners’ expectations for “Don’t Tap The Glass.” 

“Yall better get them expectations and hopes down this aint no concept nothing,” Tyler wrote the morning before its release. Tyler would follow this up with a post about its release, saying it was “made for body movement.” He even hosted a listening party the day before, charging a five-dollar entry fee, and the only rule was that attendees were not to have their phones out.

Out of all the rappers in my daily rotation, Tyler, The Creator has always felt like one of the homies. He’s a little goofy, honest, and fiercely dedicated to his art. Whether it’s on joints like “Massa” or “Rah Tah Tah,” he spits bars with a kind of silly inflection. It’s the kind of from-the-diaphragm projection that bros would ignore noise complaints from neighbors about, just to let their homies feel it in their chests—to emphasize how pressed or silly something sounds to him. Sometimes it's profound, sometimes surface-level, and other times he's just trying to spit right off the dome, like a mix of MF DOOM and Bruiser Wolf.  It’s a spectrum of wordsmithing that’s a bar because of its downright Looney Tunes delivery—every time it hits. 

I only realized Tyler’s brilliance (and his existence) after “Igor.” Still, he’s quickly become my favorite rapper because he kills every rap feature I’ve heard him on and creates sonically overloaded songs he carefully produces and tailors to each album, which I often revisit with each new release. Seeing his sonic evolution alongside his growth as a person—sometimes scrutinized by folks digging up old lyrics as if he were Eminem—is satisfying as a fan of his music, knowing he stays true to himself. 

Although Tyler himself welcomes some comparisons to his musical influences, admitting that their influence—both past and present—has played a role in shaping the artist he wants to become, “Don’t Tap The Glass,” which subverts all expectations, shows me that he isn’t content with merely being a derivative of his heroes. Instead, he’s breaking away from their influence to forge the versatile artist he’s determined to become. This was made exceedingly clear when he said as much on his verse on Clipse’s "Let God Sort Em Out" track, “P.O.V.”

The curse of the zeros

When you become the Devil or the tap dancing negro

I came to terms that I'ma probably outgrow my heroes

Come get with me 

While somewhat parasocial of an observation, Clipse’s Pusha T has openly expressed his lost love for longtime collaborator Kanye West during the media tour for "Let God Sort Em Out." Tyler is the second rapper featured on the album—after Kendrick Lamar on the controversial track “Chains and Whips.” Pusha T claims his previous label, Def Jam, tried to censor the song after Drake sued Universal over “Not Like Us." The whole saga of “Not Like Us” is something that Kendrick re-iterates on "Chains and Whips:" hip hop as it was under the reign of Drake is dying, and is now being reborn. It’s interesting to imagine Tyler writing the line about outgrowing his heroes while on tour for "CHROMAKOPIA." These ideas resonated with me, especially as I roll my eyes at Kanye fans’ common refrain that his making “Graduation” absolves all the scrutiny he has rightfully earned over the years.

Each of Tyler’s albums takes me on a new journey, offering something fresh and unique. “Igor” was the sad boy album, “Call Me If You Get Lost” was the opulence flex album, and “CHROMAKOPIA” was the introspective personal album. While "Don’t Tap the Glass" is his least conceptual album, it stays true to its purpose: encouraging body movement. Nigga pulled a Natasha Bedingfield, telling folks to release their inhibitions, put their keyboards down, and move their body to the music. 

As proof, I woke up at five a.m., put on my headphones, and listened to it, trying not to bob my head too much to avoid waking my partner before getting up and looping the album five more times to start my day as I glided through my living room on some Risky Business shit. “Don’t Tap the Glass” is a West Coast groove perfect for dancing, whether at an HBCU tailgate or a house party. I felt like I was witnessing the evolution of the same dude who made angsty-ass “Goblin” into someone who isn’t trapped in his misanthropy and wants to shake some ass. Like that one scene in Sinners, “Don’t Tap On The Glass” is Tyler creating a fun dance album that doesn’t feel forced, but is in sync with the Black history it pays homage to, with a sound uniquely his. 

What’s always made Tyler’s music resonate with me is how every verse, detail, and sonic shift feels like a direct link to who he is. His album transitions glide seamlessly—especially the openers and closers—which makes each record feel less like a choice cut to skip to but an entire beast worth looping to appreciate it from head to toe. What’s more, the musical motifs he plays with carry a strange familiarity: the same kind of vibes my older brother used to blast while cruising through Chicago when I was in kindergarten to get me to wind down for a nap (it was always OutKast even if I couldn’t grasp their lyrics), the R&B throwbacks my mama used to take out an earbud and have me listen along to on long summer commutes from school. Those kinds of formative musical memories that even if you couldn’t remember the artist or song that formed the building blocks of your taste, you can identify them by their melodies and vocal hiccups, making the warm glow you had when you first heard them shine on you all these years later. That’s Tyler to me.

Tyler, The Creator isn’t like his predecessors. He isn’t part of conscious rap caviar. Instead, he’s more like rap synesthesia. With “Don’t Tap The Glass” embodying that spirit, Tyler crafted a tight 28-minute album with music designed to provoke a reaction that feels both old-school and new: to get up and dance. In an era where music has become a passive experience, dancing to rap has become a rare phenomenon. Today’s scene is filled with (predominantly white) influencers dissecting double entendres on social media, as if listeners are on too low a vibration mentally to feel why something’s a bop in their spirit without someone breaking it down. Waking up to this on a Monday morning is a welcome surprise.