How many cars can I buy till I run out of drive?
How much drive can I have, until I run out of road?
How much road can they pave, until I run out of land?
How much land can it be until I run in the ocean?
I don’t know if this is just me, or if there’s a whole camp of people out there who feel the same way, but I stop listening to an artist after their fourth or fifth album. This is not a hard and fast rule, but it’s typically what happens. I call it the “arrival gear”. Artists usually release their most ambitious and driven albums, their most idealistic and creative music, with their debut work. All the unharnessed energy and feeling of purpose is embedded in the early material, because the musician is still on shaky ground as a performer, artist, and individual. Do they belong? Are they as good as they think they are? Do they have a vision others will accept? There’s a lot of raw feeling and honesty in the early music because that is all we know when we are young – an intent to be great and a pristine image of ourselves not as a whole, but as a unique statement. The musician that is early in their career is always like a confused teenager trying to find where they stack-up in the world and aren’t exactly sure where they fit. They might have conviction and that heady sense of personal importance, but that does not change the underlying truth that we are all to some degree insecure and within a bracket of questioning who we are, and if it’s good enough.
Maybe that’s me reading too far into the music, pulling up some latent element in the sound that most like to keep in the ground, but I believe the energy and ambition in early albums is what really draws me to an artist. The undiluted, raw ideas are most important to me because it’s the most honest a musical artist will ever be. The second and third albums often have that same energy but with more refinement and confidence, which I usually enjoy. Then it seems that life gets more complicated for a successful musician, distractions arise, the imposition of adulthood and maturation emerges, and it becomes harder to keep tapping the same reservoir of creativity if the well isn’t constantly being replenished with new thoughts and ideas. It’s true for so many, the old adage “success breeds contentment”, and I’m ultra-sensitive to this aspect of a musician. It’s like a funny bone, that hits me with a dull sense of numbness when I begin listening to an artist’s later albums and all the ambition is gone. It’s a sad day when an artist goes “back to the basics” like Eric Clapton did with root blues, or when Sting went back to British folk and traditional songs, because to me that just means they lost the creative edge and are going to draw references from original music from days long past. It wouldn’t be kosher to repaint the Mona Lisa in the same style and then try to sell it, artists must build upon the art that inspires them while adding their own personality. When production and technical input begins to overshadow ambitious concepts for the music I usually stop listening to the artist and go looking for new young artists to replace those old ones who’ve lost the edge. And just like the mail, the supply of new artists never stops – there’s a new one at the door every day.
Of course there are some amazing artists out there like The Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, Wilco, and Radiohead who keep making interesting music and stay relevant for many decades. The ability to produce great music with that creative edge is rare, and certainly differentiates the common artist from the ones we raise to greater heights of recognition. The difference between the ordinary and extraordinary is often times measured by this longevity. Bands like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones are exceptions to the rule, and very few are allowed to be exceptional. U2 is another good example of a band that even if I don’t like their later work, can still appreciate how they made a big resurgence in the early 21st Century with albums like All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000) and How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004). “Beautiful Day” became a stadium anthem for them, a band two decades old, and they pulled it off because they have that unusual capacity to remain ambitious and determined to grow in ways most never sustain. Conversely, there are those that are never allowed to reach that plateau of creativity either because of tragedy or the breaking up of the band. Groups like The Ramones or artists like Jimi Hendrix stopped making music at the apex of the personal vision and make us wonder if they would’ve lost the wellspring of musical creativity and started making something akin to adult contemporary music, or if they would’ve actually continued to grow as musicians.
This is where I mention Tyler the Creator and the third and rarer path of a musician. I find him to be one of the more interesting modern artists because of his unconventional career path and the unusual nature of his music. His path is rare because even though it started with debut material that is abrasive and controversial and beyond the definition of edgy, which is true of so many great artists from Iggy Pop and The Stooges to Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, his music has matured in a way that is equally interesting and dynamic as his early music. His first solo album Goblin (2011) is the epitome of a debut with all the raw insecure energy and creative allure you can hope for. His lyrics were amusing, aggressive, sarcastic, violent, and so many shades of unconventional that most were either horrified or intrigued or horrified by their intrigue. I think I belong in the last group, because I was appalled at how interested I was in the volatility of this young artist, how I winced at the vulgarity, yet remained drawn to the music because I knew that the underlying source was something I could understand – frustration and anger. This is true of a lot of rap music, and why I like it, because I can’t begin to understand the social issues and type of life many of these rappers have tried to overcome, but I can appreciate the raw frustrations, the confusion over women, the search for identity, and the estrangement from mainstream society.
“Yonkers” from Goblin is one of the best rap songs released this decade, not only because those beats are infectious as all hell, but because the lyrics are a good example of the allure his songs create by being appalling, contentious, yet very insightful all at the same time.
https://youtu.be/w-02QvDORnQ
His second album Wolf (2013) began to reveal the other side of Tyler the Creator that most of us heard underneath the songs in Goblin. There was an understanding that underneath a facade of violence, misogyny, and antisocial tendencies was a lot of honesty and complex emotion. He got a lot of flack from the contingency of folks that wanted him to stay as raucous and abrasive as he was in Goblin, yet he was already showing the other side of the music that was just as honest as the aggression, but was strangely beautiful because it was open and delicate and soulful, even if it still contained a good amount of brutality. I hesitate to call songs like “Awkward” and “Answer” as soft, but relative to his earlier material, it was a bit jarring.
Then he released the album Flower Boy this year. Yes, it’s called Flower Boy, and that’s a good indicator of the kind of controversy that Tyler the Creator is not afraid to court. The personal growth and maturity is unexpected when it comes from an artist that started out so far beyond the edge of decency. Here is an artist that was basically a confused juvenile with an incisive wit and unabashed style of rap that was resonating with a similar group of the most confused and angry group of juveniles. He spoke for a lot of those on the edge, with as much ambition to be raw as can be possibly conjured. Now he’s made an album like Flower Boy that has some of the most soulful and uplifting rap music to ever be released. Needless to say it’s surprising. He’s often used the backing voices of some of his more R&B leaning Odd Future friends like Syd and Frank Ocean to add that soul to his songs, but even the music on Flower Boy sustains a clear groove and softer sensibility. A song like “Boredom”, which can be heard at the top of the post, is the perfect example of the sound that we weren’t expecting, yet are totally embracing. Music critics are lavishing this record with all sorts of accolades, and they are well-deserved. He’s made an album that combines his insightful and cutting lyrics with some fantastic soul and R&B while somehow maintaining an honest representation of himself, and it’s his fourth album. He’s directing short films, creating original tv shows, and proving an all-around ability to be a prolific and ambitious creator. It’ll be interesting to see where he goes from here.
