The Daily Spin II
Tyler, The Creator | CHROMAKOPIA
Folks.
Welcome back to the Daily Spin. For the uninitiated, this is the series in which I review an album every day of 2025.
Some changes from last time: instead of a decimal-point scale, I’ll be moving to a full-point scale. Simpler, less stress, and it’s easier for me to cross-post over to RateYourMusic, where I’m slowly aggregating all of my musical ratings. Each day, I’ll add one of the albums that I rated in 2023 and the one I rated in 2025. With time, there’ll be 730 albums ranked on there by the end of the year.
As was the case two years ago, my favorite song from each album can be found at the playlist linked here.
Album: CHROMAKOPIA (2024)
Artist: Tyler, The Creator
Link:
Over his decade-long career in the world of music, Tyler Okonma has set himself in stone as a base pillar for alternative hip-hop sounds. A multitude of acts can directly point to Tyler, The Creator’s earlier efforts as generative points from which they were able to spin and grow and develop - and indeed, Odd Future is evidence of this stature.
Despite lyricism that was frequently offensive and generally leaning into horrorcore, violent, dark fantasies, his online following led to massive acclaim, especially as Tyler slid towards the mainstream with Wolf and Cherry Bomb. In the years since, Tyler has developed a legacy outside of his musical work, continuing to grow Camp Flog Gnaw, expanding into the world of fashion, and pushing the boundaries of his artistry further.
It is through this lens that it becomes clear that CHROMAKOPIA is a duology. It is simultaneously an immense achievement, an eighth album that displays major growth and forward movement from someone who has climbed a very unorthodox path to this new height, and also frankly a let-down, for those of us who were hoping for something that would continue to push at the boundaries of sound.
There are moments where Okonma’s work excels - the sampling here is fantastic throughout, and the feature list is deeply stacked with names of varied size, proving once again that Tyler is one of the most versatile artists out there when he puts his mind to it - combining the likes of Doechii and Daniel Caesar into a cohesive set is a fantastic matter considering nothing else.
Unfortunately, it all feels a little too scattered. For all of his work in making a unified album, the concepts behind it are unfortunately unrealized. Some of this is a casualty of design - an introspective album is likely intended to be varied - but there’s an unfinished sort of edge to the thoughts here. As with many of his other releases, Okonma is unfiltered, odd, and continually surprising, but those moments are burdened by the fuzzed edges that linger throughout the album.
Rating: 7/10
Best Tracks: Thought I Was Dead; St. Chroma
Worst Tracks: Sticky